So, now that I'm a bachelor again, it's time to do something to make this place more "me". I have a living room that is in need of decent light on one side of it. After looking at craigslist for inspiration, I came across this. Grill, trim and headlight bezels from an 85 F250. Have to do a little painting inside the grill and bezels to freshen it up. I plan on mounting some low wattage lightbulbs inside real sealed beam headlight assemblies. I will have to scavenge the proper size light bulb socket from home depot and wire them up. What do you guys think? Will it work?

 

a small LED bulb for each would probably be sufficient, right? I'm not looking for light to read by, just a little more ambient lighting. Any ideas would be appreciated. I will tinker first, but will research. I thought about making the "headlights" capable of increasing light output, like low beams, high beams, and another switch just for the marker lights.

 

You should look into a projector retrofit.....it would definatley light up your abode...

 

I would probably go with a pair of. 60w equivalent bulbs. Should look good!

 

And use this as a couch

 

You can get some LED bulbs from Lowe's or the like, but they're around $40-50 for a standard 60W replacement unit. Or you could just regular lamps or CCFL bulbs and call it a day. Either way, a very cool project!

 

you could use a dimmer switch also

 

You could just buy a plant.

 

I'm using a toyota straight 6 motor and turning it into a living room table

Also going to talk to the machine shop who is doing my block and head work about drilling out a hole in my spare cam so i can run a wire thru it and make a lamp.

 

Need to aim them, actually hang the grill instead of sitting on top of my bookshelf, but here's the idea.
40 watt bulbs. The worst part was breaking the real sealed beam headlights, and just trying to use the lenses. They were mounted using the bezels as a template, then glueing 1/4 mdf to the back. I used some aluminum strips to hold onto the lenses with velcro. Grill pieces are bolted together. I need to do some touch up painting behind the lenses, but otherwise it's done.