I bought the Sylvania H5006 low beam bulbs for my 69' chevelle but they don't fit into the headlight buckets right. The notches on the bulbs are supposed to fit into the notches on the buckets but they don't but the H5001 high beams do. The autoparts person (don't start!) said my car calls for the H5006. I haven't had this car together in over 10 years so I forgot what bulbs I used before. Is it because they are halogen or are they supposed to not fit into the notches?. Which bulbs do you guys use.

David;

It sounds like you may have had the front end apart and didn't put the "buckets" in the correct locations. (you said you had the car apart for ten years)

It's easy to do, and I'm speaking from experience!!

I put a 65 front clip on my 64 2 door wagon. Everything got taken apart in the process. When putting it together, I had a total of 8 different buckets (4 from the 64 and 4 from the 65). They all looked the same, but they were slightly different. I couldn't believe it! It took several hours of sorting them out to figure what combination worked. You have to take into account the notches for the bulbs, the adjusting screws, and the retaining spring. If I didn't have sample bulbs on hand, I couldn't have done it!!


I'd bet that the headlights are correct.

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Wes. Vann
Technical Reference & Wagons sections
Gold Member #5

Been there - I bought new buckets and had similar problems. Thought the headlights were wrong. The parts supplier actually called for the same part number for two of the buckets. Other suppliers were showing differnt numbers for each bucket. Every bucket is, indeed, different and must be in the right location. I ended up cutting new notches in one rather than hassling with returning it.

I figured it out. On the top of the bucket next to the top adjusting screw is either a letter "A" or "B", one is the low beam and the other the high beam. There is a slight difference, boy do I feel dumb. I should of taken more time to figure it out myself but thats what I like about this site. Thanks everybody.

P.S. Does anybody know if you can get the Sylvania Cool Blue headlights for a chevelle?
http://www.sylvania.com/prodinfo/auto/cool/welcome.htm

Cool blue--cool! Unfortunately, it looks like these are "bulbs". You see modern cars have lenses where there are inner replacable lamp bulbs. Our Chevelles used actual sealed beam units. The filaments were actually apart of the head lamp.

I'm running Wagner Halogens in my '70. They appear to be the old sealed beam incandescents, but if you look closely inside you see the little halogen lamp.

Bottom line, I doubt Cool Blue's will be seen a Chevelle any time soon http://www.chevelles.com/forum/frown.gif

Maybe we can all start flooding Sylvania's e-mail system with requests?! http://www.chevelles.com/forum/smile.gif

Joe: If you're running bulb halogens, why couldn't you just replace those bulbs with cool blues?

Kurt

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The 68 Chevelle info page. [last updated Nov. 30, 98]
www.geocities.com/~68_chevelle/Chevelle/Info.html (http://www.geocities.com/~68_chevelle/Chevelle/Info.html)
Email: Kbyfield@terracom.net
T.C. Gold #6
A.C.E.S. #1352

Kurt, no I couldn't. You see the Wagner Halogens I'm running are "sealed beam" just like the originals, only instead of the old days were there was a little filament inside the whole headlite, these have a small halogen lamp sealed inside the glass headlight itself. In other words, it looks stock but the heart of them is modern halogen technology.

You can't just pop out the lamps, there sealed in there.

Modern cars just have lenses on the outsides, inside there is removable sockets that hold halogen bulbs. Those would be candidates for Cool BLUE.

Joe