I'm need to mount factory headlight Assemblies in a fiberglass front end, 1989 Beretta. Any advice would be appreciated.

I scored a complete, new VFN one piece fiberglass nose off craigslist for $175 but couldn't pull myself to commit to a flimsy piece of shyt ……….

I wacked the "nose" section off the one piece and made a steel structure to support it out of various sizes of moly tubing and mounted it to the fenders using a few chassis tab. The nose had no openings for the grills or headlights so I cut them out to size and simply used the factory steel headlight buckets welded to some 1/4" rod, welded to my steel structure. It actually came together incredibly easy once I started rolling. I also used a Rhodes tubular rad support and ended up using two different size tubes that slide into one another so the entire nose is removable in about 5 minutes.

The steel structure I made I fiberglassed and epoxied to the fiberglass nose cone and it has held up well over the last few years. Saved over a 100lbs in the process too.

I don't really recall how an original Beretta is held together, do the light's mount to the header panel itself or does it have a separate headlight mounting panel ???

I'm not sure how it's originally mounted. The headlights have 3 points I could mount to a bracket. I'm thinking about making a brace that goes vertically behind the headlight.

Hopefully you can see this, but I made "L" shaped brackets from 1/8" tubing and welded tabs to them. They were then welded onto my rad support. The buckets have two mounting points on the "L" bracket and one mounting point where the front header and front fender bolt together.

Thanks for the replies. The problem I'm going to have is the headlights are about 2 1/2 feet forward of the radiator. They're going to have to be mounted in the front end. They stick through about an inch and are mounted flush with the grille.

quote:

Originally posted by RacerVX54:
https://www.amazon.com/Norton-...hesive/dp/B00AC26O88

"Used for metal-to-metal bonding; 75 minutes"

After 75 minutes it falls off. Take care. Tom Worthington

Tom there is one for plastic/fiberglass and metal lol. It's not falling off.

I would think you could bend up like 050 aluminum sheet and bond to nose and mount light buckets to it

quote:

Originally posted by Top355x:
I would think you could bend up like 050 aluminum sheet and bond to nose and mount light buckets to it

This is what I ended up doing, should be fine. Can't move the light assemblies, very solid. Thanks again for all the responses.

Thanks Frank

Panel bond works great if you do not want to build a bracket system, for retention. We use 3M stuff get it at the body supplier but here is a link to it at Summit

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/tes-08115