Front Directionals Installed Working

Last night I was able to install the directional housings and lenses. On the passenger's side, as noted in a previous blog, there was a ground wire added -- I presume because the ground is not solid throughout the car. Not really knowing what I'm doing at all, I installed another ground wither on the driver's side and made sure there was good metal contact with the housings and I have solid lights.

After turning my attention to the rear lights; pulling the lense covers and really having a tough time getting the bulbs out (even one was broken off), I realized that perhaps the sockets were toast. Unfortunately, it doesn't look serviceable without pulling the bumper. So, online I go to try to hunt down whether or not this is true. In my research I found an incredible forum of GTO and Lemans fanatics hosted by Performance Years, a Pontiac specialist. This really looks its going to be a great forum to ask for advice. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that there are tons of these forums out there for car nuts. Living in the internet age is definitely a plus when working on older cars. At any rate, I may try to screw around with the lights without pulling the bumper just yet -- was hoping I was getting closer to getting it on the road.

The funny part is that while scanning the forum entries, I found someone having problems with other lighting problems, and there was a great response to one of the entries that suggested adding a ground wire was fixing the symptom not the curing the problem. The problem is that the grounding straps probably need to be replaced or are missing and that proper ground throughout the car will solve many gremlins that may be lurking throughout the car. Sounds pretty reasonable -- also sounds like a good project for the winter time. :-)

Didn't have time to get a picture with the lenses off... but here is one of the car from the rear.