It looks like a 200mm × 142mm sealed beam ought to physically fit, but I don't have one to try, and I don't feel like fabbing something if it's already been done for me.
Reason I ask is I took my original question to a certain lighting expert that used to hang out here and to his knowledge the best advice he could offer was to buy genuine Ford replacement headlights. I don't feel like paying $150 each for mediocre lights when E-codes are so much cheaper and better.
I did get a cheap aftermarket driver's side to get me through inspection, we'll see if it's as bad as they're supposed to be (I suspect it will be.) I'm pissed at Ford now too, I not only had to take the grille and both parking lights off but also the grille support - and I can't see how to properly adjust/aim the light without removing the parking light. I'd think that this was all done for ease of assembly, but it appears that one has to install the parking lights onto the grille support *after* the grille support is installed on the truck, and messing with those parking lights is the hardest part of the process.
welcome to frod engineering. frod have some of the smartest guys in the automotive biz. they know /exactly/ what they're doing. there's not a single element of any of their vehicles that's not been analyzed for not just cost of build, but cost of maintenance, cost of excess reliability, and cost of lawsuits in the event of failure. right down the thread pitch and paint thickness. difficulty of replacing front-end componentry like this is because it's all supposed to be replaced together in the event of a smash for a newer vehicle, and to be prohibitively expensive to do on an older vehicle. enjoy.
Factory headlamps for a '97 F150 do not require any disassembly of the vehicle to get the lamp assemblies out.
You should be able to move the adjusters from one lamp to the other without changing the settings, this would put the new lamps in the same position as the old ones.
Removing the turn signals is a single screw, and removing the grille is a few plastic grommets across the top and a couple more screws that hold the grille on. The adjustment of the headlamps should be very easy after that.
I just walked outside and removed and installed my passenger side headlamp to see what you are talking about. The adjustment screws are also the screws that the slide-clips lock onto. The outboard adjustments can be made with the turn signal out, the inboard adjustment can be made with the grill out.
It appears that the inboard lockdown is used to adjust the headlamp flush to the grille, and it is not an important adjustment for aiming.
The outboard lockdowns adjust the verticle and horizontal plane to point the light in the right direction.
I cannot see the need to remove the grille support.
I couldn't turn the adjuster screws on my old headlight, so I had to remove the clips, which are inaccessable without removing the grille bracket from the body
you have to remove the grille to remove the grille bracket, there are five screws behind there, one of them directly behind the grille at the bottom center, no way around that
removing the parking light assembly is two screws at the top and two nuts behind the parking light, maybe yours is a different assembly from mine? The two nuts each side are in PITA locations, the outboard one behind the battery is especially challenging (wear a long sleeved shirt)
I guess if my old adjusters weren't frozen, I would have only had to remove the driver's side parking light assy... but still
Fords have been some of the easier to work on cars IME. Try a mazda where the wiring is right down to the mm so there isn't any slack. Where each fastener is the smallest size possible.. not to mention the usual problems of JIS fasteners. Or maybe a GM car which requires torx just to replace to taillamp bulb.
My clips just came out. Lift them to release the locks that hold the headlight in, then when the light is out, the clips just come straight up. Nothing to it.
The screws come out with the lamps.
You have something else wrong... My lamps came out and went back in in about
2 minutes. I did not look at how to separate the adjusting screws from the lamp housing, but it did not look to be very difficult.
You should be able to set the inboard adjuster with a ruler and be pretty close to setting the front of the lamp flush to the grille. The outboard adjusters will move the lamp in and out, and tilt it up and down.
There are only three adjusting screws, all of them are on the lamp housing.
If you had ever examined a mazda designed you'd know they are clearly different.
Length and diameter. Head sizes are often selected such that many tool sizes are needed for a particular task. Ford tends to unify head sizes. Ford leaves slack in their wiring. Designs are very different, fastening arrangements are different. Ford still uses many small designs that go back decades. For instance when the front of my '97 Mustang got smashed some years ago I needed to put a turn signal lamp on it so I could avoid a ticket. All I had in my inventory was a maverick spare. The mustang's bulb holding plug was the same geometry. Fit the 1970s lamp like it was made for it.
JIS bolts tend to break easily when they have been in service awhile and corroded a bit. Mazda uses JIS fasteners. Ford, not being a Japanese company, does not.
Japan industrial standard. JIS.
Not measurement system but standard system: ISO, ANSI, JIS, DIN.
no, the mustang is different. if you look at the "international" frod models, like the fiesta, focus, fusion, and taurus, they have much more in common with mazda. historically, they even tried common platforms.
just like mazda. just like all the car companies outside g.m.
the mustang may leave a little slack. but the international models are cut close, just like mazda.
the mustang is just one vehicle, and yes it's different. you need to check all the rest.
that's got NOTHING to do with thread size or "jis". sorry.
for threads, iso = jis.
there's no "probably". frod use metric iso threads. mazda use what are in fact the same as metric iso threads. metric is iso is jis for threading - 60° pitch.
there's very few differences between jis and iso except on things like flanges, and somewhat strangely, spark plug heights [but at 2.5mm difference, you'll never notice].
No they don't. There was some platform and drive train sharing but other than the borrowed bits which were used as they were designed by the respective companies there is no similarity. Even in platform shared models like the Probe the lines of what is Ford and and what is Mazda is clear as day to anyone familiar with both makes. I could clearly see what was Mazda MX6 and what was Ford in an early Probe. The two companies design things quite differently.
Go work on a mazda and see how many socket sizes you have to use to do a single job.
You're talking out of your ass.
I have. You're talking out of your ass.
And you clearly demonstrate your profound ignorance. JIS is the specification of the fasteners, material, strength, heat treat, platings, etc and so on.
A fastener is more pitch and diameter.
The threads are essentially the same. But there's a lot more to a bolt than threads. Ford actually uses many head designs and platings that are unique to ford. They have done so for at least 40 years. Ford uses a great deal of custom fasteners. I can only guess where the rest comes from and given the age of the company that is most likely ANSI.
There's a lot more than threads to a fastener. It's clear you've never even opened the hood of a japanese car because it is immediately apparent to the eye that JIS fasteners are different. The plating, the details of the hex head, etc and so on is clearly different to the eye alone... then there is the feel of them when they have some corrosion on em.
A post ago you didn't even know what JIS was and now you just declare. Stop talking out of your ass. JIS is quite different in many aspects beyond the cosmetic. If you'd even wrenched you'd note the difference. It becomes immediately apparent in the feel of the bolts.
Thanks to working for international companies I get to deal with all four systems on a regular basis (although DIN has been mostly absorbed into ISO many off the shelf metric fasteners are still spec'd to DIN standards. There's really no such thing as an ISO fastener, just an ISO version of the previous DIN standard).
Because of the difference there are speciality suppliers of JIS fasteners in the USA and europe. If there was no difference there would be no need for such sourcing.
Probably not. Pop open a hood some time, what was designed by Ford and what was designed by mazda is quite apparent to anyone with a clue. The companies do things very differently.
Just because companies can share components doesn't mean they all use the same design standards and styles.
You must have a completely different truck than I... seriously, I can't even *see* one of the clips without removing the grille support. Did Ford change the design over the years?
oh, and on rereading your post I think we must be talking about different designs. The metal clips on mine have to come completely out to release the big plastic "nut" for the adjuster to allow the headlight assembly to come out. My truck is a '93 F-150.
It looks like I could have taken some big pliers and tried to rotate the head end of the adjuster 90 degrees to release it from the headlamp body, but since the screws were frozen and the new headlamp came with new adjusters, I wanted to use the new ones.
On Sat, 05 Nov 2011 14:50:22 -0400, Nate Nagel rearranged some electrons to say:
Nate, you do not need to remove the adjusters to get the headlight bucket out. There are clips (three if I remember right) that you slide up to release it.
They changed it a lot over the years, but not within the production run for the years you asked about. My truck is a '97 F150. There ate two black tabs that come up on each side of the headlamps with a grab-handle that is bent toward the engine compartment. Pull these up to release the lamp assembly, which will come out toward the front of your truck. To make a change to the adjustment -- aiming -- of the lamps, you turn the phillips head screw at the opposite end of the thingies that the tabs lock onto.
My bad. You said 1992 to 1997. My truck is a '97, and is not even remotely similar to your '93.
Sorry.
I thought one of us was an idiot, and that I was just confused. We are not talking about the same design in any way, that makes one of us not an idiot, and explains my confusion. The problem here is that I was not paying attention, and since my truck is a '97, then what I have is what you have given the range of years you provided. The '96 is the last year that F150s shared the same front end, and any other feature for that matter, with the truck you have.
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