Reconditioning Vintage Headlight Vacuum Actuators

YouTube Transcript:

today i'm going to walk you through rebuilding an actuator for a hidden headlight system on your cougar your cyclone your torino marquis there's a whole range of them that use either a version that looks like this or a version that looks like this and of course the main difference on this version is how tall the shaft goes up otherwise they're the same so i say rebuild i'm really talking about reconditioned because we're not going to split them open here we don't have the machinery for that it's a lot more work what we're going to do is focus on this bellows dust cover this is not a seal and you will see little tiny weep holes in there don't worry those are supposed to be there because this does not hold air so when this retracts and expands the air actually needs to breathe in and out of here first thing you need to know is whether your unit is even worth tackling and if it's not worth tackling we of course have them on our website already reconditioned ready to go with a core charge if it sounds like a tambourine probably isn't going to be the best but don't give up on it yet here's a quick way to do it not everybody has a handheld pump up vacuum mighty vac tester so you put your index finger over here and you put your hand here and if it holds rock tight and doesn't go down even a little bit that internal bellows is without perforation now we know yours is going to leak on the top that's why you're reconditioning it the top not only tests the bellows but it is testing the seal here and almost all of them are bad so just to verify that yours needs done you'll hold now this one we're not going to we're not going to open this one up we're not going to mess with it because look at that it holds well so we mark these as used and we sell them under a different skew on our website okay here we go let's see if this one here's one i be blasted it hasn't been opened up put my look at that that's not going to hold any vacuum that's that's the type of actuator on your 69 or 70 cougar that when you turn off your key with your headlights down it just lifts right up and not only is that annoying and not attractive that's a constant vacuum leak when you're running your car you don't want that so again before we even start this project let's make sure this is a unit worth tackling and this one holds tight see that isn't that drifting down at all i'm pushing hard on it but up here it's bad so first thing we're going to do after we've bee blasted it is we're going to take this seal off and commence to reconditioning okay the 6768 actually these were used on 69 t-birds as well as well as well as the lincoln's side note some of them have internal springs and you can just hear that spring you can just feel it and that was a fail safe that they did starting i think 69 on some cars and so if anything went wrong with your system it it opened your headlights meaning it closed this so you got a giant spring in here and they really give a ton of pressure let's see if i can i'll have to do it this way and i don't like that because you're putting constant pressure i mean look how hard that is to pull back so you you guys with the six nine t-birds and some lincoln's and such if you got these don't even don't even bother go find yourself some earlier ones or ones off of 678 cougars that don't have that spring the reason being you're creating constant tension vacuum on your entire system so if you've got the tiniest leak uh it's gonna find it and and your headlights are gonna creep up so every time you park your car the car show they're going to go up get this other version and you won't have that problem so i find these easier to build than the tin cans and i'll show you why first reason is they go in a vise easier because you have this nice die cast bracket don't clamp them this way you'll ruin it clamp them this way and make sure you don't hurt your lower nipple and we're going to get digs here we're going to just chop right through all this rubber hook that off to the side zip time cut that off if it's still in place next we're going to get a punch my goal here is to not disturb it as much as possible meaning when i'm done here i want it to look like nobody was ever here so you got four crimps one two three four i leave that crimp alone there's no reason to take all four out and that one is hard to re-crimp because of where it is with the top port so you're going to just go as gentle as possible just a few swipes on these crimps we'll call them okay now that i got my three crimps opened up i'm gonna get a smallish screwdriver and i'm gonna poke in next to the rubber dust boot i'm going to go under this retaining ring a thin washer take that off save it don't bend it take off the rest of my duct spoon now we got to go diving for the seal that's right here and on a good actuator i'll show you another one there this is easy to get off but on this one where it's disintegrating it's kind of hard it might come out in pieces but that's okay we'll just keep digging at it yeah i'm ripping it right here that's okay piece off there and if a little piece of rubber gets left behind in there somehow it's not optimal but it's not going to ruin anything there we got it all out like this and now we're ready to beat blast look at that look at all the ick that's in there that's from water getting in there and that's how these actuators go bad first you get a perforation somewhere in the dust boot then that puts a little rust on this shaft once this shaft has some rust on it it's now working like a rat tail file against this seal and eventually that seal gets so bad it just falls inside then the car is parked you got no winterization and water is just filling it up and if it sits with water in here long enough it's toast but i think this one could be saved it won't be optimal because once i b blast this it'll be if you put it under magnifying glass it'll be pitted and you're never going to get perfect seal on that but good enough now let me show you another one that's the opposite end of the spectrum this one the boot has gone bad but obviously it wasn't outside because there's no rust on here so on this particular one i'm gonna be blast it while it's still together because when you're glass bead blasting something you're putting ground up fine glass inside your unit which means you got to get it all out so on this particular one let's not even get any glass bead particles inside [Music] okay after you think you've got all the glass speed particles out of there now we can start reassembling and the camera won't show it but there is just a little bit of pitting on this shaft again a micro a microscope telescope uh would really show it but it's what we got in the comments if you have a better idea for grease uh let me know but this is what i've been using and it seems to hold up i don't know what the factory used the factory was very sparingly using it i kind of glob it on because my theory is second time around you're trying to fill up more of that pitted rod so i i'm kind of and then i i put it down here too because i want my seal to have a tight fit and vacuum will make it squeeze down on that grease so here we go and you know i'm not a you know i don't rebuild these for a living there's people that deal in this industry and again look in the comments because some people are going to say well here's how you really should do it and i'll defer to them i'm just a guy that answers the phone and it behooves me to do this in front of a camera instead of doing it over and over and over on the phone with no pictures so here's the seals i've been using we are still working with daniel carpenter to reproduce the original seals here's what the original seals look like let's get a close-up of that two others have gone before me and reproduced this seal and this seal neither one of them were to factory specs and you aren't going to get 50 years out of them believe it or not some of these actuators after 50 years work perfectly so before we bring out this version we want it to work better than original i feel that the silicone based aftermarket one that looks nothing like that works better on used shafts just because how squishy it is just the vacuum just kind of sucks it into that rod again you you might have a different opinion i'd love to hear you for me so i use some snap ring pliers it's nice and flexible there and i gently place it over the shaft here and roll it over see this is the part that doesn't seal so these are sharp edges here and if i roll it over i'm not ever really poking the inside of the seal with these sharp edges and sometimes you can actually get this in without even using a tool if you're if you're lucky so i'm just kind of squeezing it in usually you got to get a screwdriver to coax it in the rest of the way and then it's better to use an old screwdriver than a brand new one because you don't want to puncture the seal in any way [Music] okay once i get it in there i just kind of wallet around to make sure it's set and i'll put a little more grease on it now let's see how well it holds i mean that's that's holding rock hard that ain't moving a bit so we got success now we're gonna get my little guy here the dust bellows so when you people that really want to do this right you will index those holes so they're facing towards your radiator because if they're facing this way as you're going down the road road spray or maybe somebody power washes your grill i don't know tiny bits of water could get in there easier this way than this way now i don't think the factory cared which way it was facing so that's just for you people that that uh really really care and you can rip this boot pretty easy so we're gonna be gentle we're gonna get it there and we're gonna stretch it but not too far and again i think i think the best way to do it is you put it over the stud and roll it here we go roll it over now we're in place now we're going to set it down there and i'm going to grab one of these rings and i put that on the wire wheel to make it a little pretty you know they're all dirty when you take them out here's what here's what an old yucky one looks like put them on your wire wheel or b blast them or whatever you'll get it pretty and remember i said you don't need to disturb that fourth crimp this is the fourth crimp i talked about i'm going to take my retaining washer and make sure it's straight and i'm going to go under that one and if i did it right i should be able to snap this ring in place without much effort and the fourth fourth one takes a little more effort let's get this screwdriver as close to the edge as possible so we don't bend the ring just like that now we could stop there but i want to have i get a little pointy hammer like this and i slide it on the top and i'm trying to recreate the crimp and since this die cast has somewhat of a memory if you hit just where and that it works better if you make sure that this is pushed down because remember you got rubber underneath it just a little bit just just that much let's do the fourth one there now at first glance after you paint this nobody's ever going to be able to tell you got in there i mean there's your four cramps you didn't break this and it's important that when you're taking it out you don't over extend because die cast breaks easy this is pot metal and that's a very thin casting and if it does break no big deal you'll put your crimp here instead of here but again we're trying to make it look like nobody was there so last step we're going to zip tie the factory used a white zip tie i use black zip ties so i know this this is my unit and it's been reconditioned and it's not factory actually i'm just out of white zip ties so this is what i've been using for last couple months there you go your unit is good for another i won't say 50 years but uh you know it should be good for a long time because you're not parking it out in the gravel driveway in the wintertime like the first decades were okay this was my cleaner of the two that i left the ring on because that seal hadn't fallen apart and it shouldn't be rusty inside there so it shouldn't need for me to get a bunch of contaminants in there a side note on a really cold day you start hammering on us these will break so get them nice and warm by the wood stove or your heater or whatever before you start tapping on it and as i rebuild these i notice that some have very definite crimps on it like this one they really crimped it and some of them they just barely crimp it it's much easier to do the ones they barely crimp okay let's pop this snap ring out here get under there and we're gonna try to do it without bending the retaining ring too much there we go and i just broke the casting there because i didn't bring it out enough it's always good make mistakes on here on film so that shows you what you're up against so i'll get some pliers and straighten that out there's our little white zip tie isn't very white anymore and you see we did get some sand in there after all look at that now here is one that has not been exposed to the elements and did not completely disintegrate on us and these are the best ones to rebuild because i'll be able to take some four out steel wool and just gently clean that shaft and that's your best unit and these when they're like this watch this watch how easy this is going to be to remove this i'm just going to poke my screwdriver there and look at that that's how easy they are there we go there's what an original untampered with seal looks like here's what they look like inside see how over the years they had little tiny ribs in there and see how those ribs have worn away and you'll notice they're worn more on one side than another that's because these are designed to cant back and forth in your headlight bucket so you're going to be wearing out the seal here and here more because your as your headlight door goes back and forth this rocks and the can rocks so make sure when you get these back in that they actually can't and they aren't rusty and you didn't over tighten this and there's no blockage because they need to move back and forth [Music] and just in case you wondered what it looks like inside this is the bellows and they're pretty hardy um some people will if they have a leak in here somewhere instead of throwing it away they'll say well they'll spray some it's called flex seal in there and i don't know how long that lasts that's a temporary maneuver i think but uh that's what your bellows looks like and it sandwiches down there and your other piece goes on it and as you oh here's one that was full of water look at that so look how pitted that shaft is all the way up here so this one we can still service but it's just not as good a unit as we'd like now if it doesn't hold air on the bottom nipple like this one don't even send it to me that rubber bellows has got a perforation a leak in it and we can't do anything with it so there's what an ugly one looks like that's been full of water for years 970 version and again on other models that goes way into the other years we have a little different system these tin cans a little more tricky but no big deal good news is you only have to build one of them so here we go here's one that yep that one's leaking not a lot but you know some of them some of them take what 20 minutes an hour to drift up well we want to get rid of that on your car so it'd be best if you have i'm gonna build one eventually i just haven't built a wooden jig to put in here but what i'm gonna do is just not go very tight just just going to get it snug i don't want to dent that can there's no reason to and first thing we're going to do and again i'm going to leave this crimp alone there's no need to take out all four crimps let's leave one there so you got a template and what you're trying to recreate when you close it so i'm gonna get my screwdriver in there and i'm just gonna work it and then from the other side and work it [Applause] get this ring out without damaging it there we go there's my ring [Music] and this seal is not completely eroded so this should be an easy one watch this bunk there we go now i can go be blast this and get glass particles are in there or i can try to just brush it away with a wire brush i think on this one i'm actually going to bead blast it because i want that that silicone seal i'm putting in there i want it to have a good seal now had i just used a wire brush i don't think i could have got in those crevices good and so i'm gonna make up for the seal here and i'm going to really be generous with this lithium grease i just feel it'll make a better seal if it's got a good coating of lithium white lithium grease on it [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so [Applause] [Music] and i want to show you one more version that you're going to encounter that's a little bit more difficult this is a service replacement notice here instead of four individual crimps it's crimped all the way around and sometime in the late 70s i don't know early 80s they changed suppliers and they had a different mechanism for closing them and it just takes a lot more time you're just going to have to get your screwdriver in there and then just work work work it's a soft metal and just work work work work work all the way around and then when i go to close it instead of hammering it all the way around i just crimp it in four spots so when it resembles a factory piece instead of a surface replacement piece but yeah you can see the two differences here so there you go uh we have these for sale whether you have a good core or not so you can buy them on our website with without the core some people send their core in advance sometimes they have to give you the bad news and say oops you didn't do the test and it doesn't hold pressure on that bottom nipple we can't do anything with it so if you've got extra units that are clean you can always send those in to work against your reconditioned unit but i say do it yourself the hardest part is getting them out of the car as you can see it's not that hard so buy our little kit and do it yourself and if it only lasts 10 years no big deal you can do it again the kits are cheap thanks for watching