Stacked to Round headlights and Shaving Hood Ornament

by 76 Malibu Sun Apr 13, 2014 11:36 am

I am looking at converting my 1976 Malibu Classic with stacked headlights to the single round units. I have the corner pieces from a 1974 Malibu that look like they will just bolt on. What about the bumper fillers? Will my 1976 fillers work okay with the 1974 corner pieces? What's the best solution for the headlight wiring short of a cut and hack job? If anyone has done this swap, please let me know what is involved.

Has anyone removed and filled the hood ornament? What's the best way to go about this?

by Laguna Budman Sun Apr 13, 2014 11:52 am

I think i have a header with no hood ornament. Otherwise my fab welding friend used a plug and tig welded it in.

by dynchel Sun Apr 13, 2014 12:28 pm

If you are changing the grille (to a '74 piece) make sure you have the brackets that go to the core support as they are different. The fillers should fit fine, I used a '75 piece on my '74 buckets and they were a exact bolt on.

by 76 Malibu Sun Apr 13, 2014 3:29 pm

I can probably get the body shop that is doing the painting to do weld in a filler (hopefully). I am not using a 1974 grille, I have a 1976 base grille that I blacked out that I am using. I think this should work with the older '74 headlight buckets?

by dynchel Sun Apr 13, 2014 3:31 pm

I have a '76 grille on my '74...direct bolt on.

by pila Sun Apr 13, 2014 6:35 pm

I believe you can use just the head lamp plug for the upper 4- head light harness. The top lamps have the high & low beam, like the round lamps. You can clip the lower lamp wiring off, or tape them to the bundle.

by Tom77 Mon Apr 14, 2014 8:01 am

76 Malibu wrote:I am looking at converting my 1976 Malibu Classic with stacked headlights to the single round units. I have the corner pieces from a 1974 Malibu that look like they will just bolt on. What about the bumper fillers? Will my 1976 fillers work okay with the 1974 corner pieces? What's the best solution for the headlight wiring short of a cut and hack job? If anyone has done this swap, please let me know what is involved.

Has anyone removed and filled the hood ornament? What's the best way to go about this?

Should tell Anthony(limey) he is looking for a hood ornament.

by 76 Malibu Thu Apr 17, 2014 10:33 pm

Thanks for the advice guys. My hood ornament is missing the plastic inserts. so I am not sure if anyone would actually want it.

by Limey SE Fri Apr 18, 2014 2:45 am

Ghost Rider wrote:Should tell Anthony(limey) he is looking for a hood ornament.

Thanks Ghost aka Tom one is in route !!!

by 76 Malibu Tue Aug 25, 2015 4:55 pm

Finally got the headlights converted and new header sans hood ornament. Filler panels worked perfectly.

Before Stacked to Round headlights and Shaving Hood Ornament Malibu11

Stacked to Round headlights and Shaving Hood Ornament Malibu11

After

Stacked to Round headlights and Shaving Hood Ornament Img_6410

by dynchel Tue Aug 25, 2015 4:57 pm

Looks very good.

by thatfnthing Tue Aug 25, 2015 5:53 pm

I like it. You'd never know it wasn't original.

by dynchel Tue Aug 25, 2015 6:02 pm

You got the opposite of me, I have a '76 grille on a '74

by Limey SE Tue Aug 25, 2015 6:27 pm

Looks good, But still Love the 4 eyes better LOL

by 76 Malibu Tue Aug 25, 2015 9:10 pm

Thanks for the comments guys. I have never liked the quad stacked lights, so I am much happier with this look. It was a simple remove old part and bolt new ones on. The grille on the car is actually a 1976 base model grille that I blacked out. The headlight buckets are from a 1974 Chevelle, but are the same as those used on base 1976 models. The only difference is the smaller bezels used on the 1974's vs the 1975+. So, the car basically looks like a base 1976 Malibu now, albeit with a much nicer interior. I kept all the stock parts though if the need ever arose to switch back.

I kind of think it has a 1973 SS look going for it now, with the blacked out grille and round lights.

by dynchel Tue Aug 25, 2015 9:42 pm

Stacked to Round headlights and Shaving Hood Ornament IMG_20150806_081502_zpsjpnspe0i

Same look I have, except mine is a '74 with a '76 classic grille.

by Limey SE Tue Aug 25, 2015 9:43 pm

How good is the Chrome on that Hood Ornament I have inserts to put back on it ?

by Roadcaptain S3 Wed Aug 26, 2015 8:10 am

very nice.

by 76 Malibu Wed Aug 26, 2015 9:11 am

dynchel wrote:
Same look I have, except mine is a '74 with a '76 classic grille.

Very nice car!! I didn't know what the cross hatched grille would look like blacked out, but seeing it now on your car looks very good. The blacked out bezels and sidepipes are a nice touch too!

Limey SE wrote:How good is the Chrome on that Hood Ornament I have inserts to put back on it ?

The chrome is very good. It always bothered me that the inserts fell out.

by 77cruiser Thu Aug 27, 2015 6:40 am

After looking at this I'm thinking if this is something I want to do on my 77 Monte.

by Dinomyte Fri Aug 28, 2015 8:22 pm

pila wrote:I believe you can use just the head lamp plug for the upper 4- head light harness. The top lamps have the high & low beam, like the round lamps. You can clip the lower lamp wiring off, or tape them to the bundle.

Is this accurate? That makes me one step closer to getting the Laguna nose on my '77. !!

by 76 Malibu Fri Aug 28, 2015 8:55 pm

Dinomyte wrote:
pila wrote:I believe you can use just the head lamp plug for the upper 4- head light harness. The top lamps have the high & low beam, like the round lamps. You can clip the lower lamp wiring off, or tape them to the bundle.

Is this accurate? That makes me one step closer to getting the Laguna nose on my '77. !!

Yes, the (upper) low beam light works fine. On the quad light setup this ligt has the three prong plug. With quad lights, the low beam light switches to high beam too. This is what I have done with my car with the dual lights, just used the low beam plug and left the high beam ones disconnected. On my car there is actually a harness plug just before the light plugs. The light harness is actually just a very small harness that connects to this "master" plug all in front of the rad support. My guess is this allowed for the factory to easily adapt the wiring for dual or quad light, with a different harness for each setup since 1976 had both lighting options. I may make a new harness later on to clean it up or possibly run a relay to get more power to the lights.

by pila Fri Aug 28, 2015 9:33 pm

Some folks on another forum have re-wired the head lights with heavier gauge wire, along with a relay.
The relay is powered by the light switch of course.
Anyway, it's claimed that the new wiring & relay have made the lights much brighter, which makes sense, since the factory wiring was never very heavy gauge to begin with.
I want to re-wire mine that way also.......new lamp sockets, wire, and a relay...
Only thing I'm not sure about, is the protection of the built in self-resetting circuit breaker in the light switch, which wouldn't help much if the relay craps out etc...
Maybe a re-settable circuit breaker between the lights & the relay ??

by Dinomyte Sat Aug 29, 2015 6:37 am

Tony & Pila - thanks guys. This is very valuable information for me.

by pila Sat Aug 29, 2015 8:46 pm

After thinking about the relays, it would have to have separate relays for High & Low beams......not that it's a big deal once the mod is underway.
And relays are fairly cheap.....

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