cfair

Gang,
In 66 and 67 & probably beyond, Olds used headlight bezels or covers that looked like this on the big cars. They are secured by two screws on top and two clips on the bottom:

66 big car headlight bezel. 2 screws at the top, 2 slots at the bottom riveted to the trim on the back.

Sorry you can't see the screws in this picture, Olds wanted them to blend in so they used black-headed Phillips screws, at least on the big cars.

It wouldn't surprise me if the Cutlass/442's used a similar design, but scaled back for the "little" cars.

Here's the factory drawing of how these parts are supposed to fit together:


66 Assembly Manual drawing of headlight bezels


A few weeks backI was in my local (deep stock) hardware store. They have an especially good supply of Hillman brand hardware - probably 50' x 25' or more dedicated to bolts and hardware of all sorts.

I noticed these spacers under the Hillman automotive section, they are what the upper screws bite into to secure the bezels:

Turns out the Hillman parts work with just 30 seconds or so of Dremel cutting to the correct length.

I knew my old ones were loose from many cycles of taking the bezels on and off and I had a few equally bad (usually broken tangs/feet) in my supply, so I thought I'd roll the disc and see if the Hillman ones could be made to work. They can, but you have to slice off a half inch or so to get them to be the right length. I used a Dremel with a cutoff wheel because I'm too lazy to use a hacksaw.

With the bezel off, here are the parts I'm talking about in their location:

New Hillman nylon nuts in place of original Olds parts after just a bit of trimming.

Now that new nylon is in place & snug, not loose, it's one less place for a metal-to-metal rattle to come from.

If you're buying used bezels, the key things to look out for on used parts are that the lower clips are still on the back of the trim parts. Over the years, the rivets that hold the retention clips sometimes get loose or break all together. Other than that, it just has to be up to your standards for cosmetic/shiny quality standards, whatever that may be.

Tiny little project, it took probably 15 minutes, but nice to reduce one more rattle source. Hope this helps some of you.

Cheers
Chris

cfair

Cut to fit and it works