Coach Lights

did they put them on upside down? some times you could do that and get away with it. it may have been a wire thing and they needed the wire going up or down. or some one took it apart in a repaint and didn't pay any attention when they put it back to gather. but they look like a reversible one to me.
 
There is no way to know what the lights were originally used on, and when the coach was manufactured, they sourced whatever would work for their application. It is completely possible that the right was used on the left and the left was used on the right, because the application for the coach was different than the application originally. Usually when there is a left and right, there is a change in the inclination of the part. It might just be that is how the lights fit the Eureka best. The only one that would know for certain how they originally were mounted and why is Tom McPherson.
 
Coach Lamps

Most genuine GM coach lamps from that era operated on a system that used a higher voltage converter and a fluorescent type of tube. Yours look like a standard bulb socket. Is there a casting number one might trace back to Ford or Chrysler? Maybe the lens has a traceable number too... I really don't know enough about the Eureka coach manufacturing, but was this a car made in Canada or the USA? That too could make a difference. John Royark has a similar car, maybe he can advise how his are mounted and how they might be marked. Another thought would be CW Coach or Danny Ryder for a replacement.
 
Lights

Most genuine GM coach lamps from that era operated on a system that used a higher voltage converter and a fluorescent type of tube. Yours look like a standard bulb socket. Is there a casting number one might trace back to Ford or Chrysler? Maybe the lens has a traceable number too... I really don't know enough about the Eureka coach manufacturing, but was this a car made in Canada or the USA? That too could make a difference. John Royark has a similar car, maybe he can advise how his are mounted and how they might be marked. Another thought would be CW Coach or Danny Ryder for a replacement.
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These where used on most Caddy's in the 70,s on the b pillar. And on some up to the early 80,s .
 
Tom

Tom looked at the existing light, and thought that it was interesting that the lights appeared to be reversed, but did not have any specific information on them. I believe that I have similar lights on my '89 Superior Cadillac 6-door Limo. Some versions of these lights have what appears to be a mounting screw visible on the bottom edge of the metal fixture, while mine on the Pontiac have no visible mounting screw and are attached from the inside of the pillar.
 
Hello Matt. Don't know if this will help any or not, but owning a few different Cadillacs from the 1980s era, I have some observations I can share about the GM factory coach lights, which they called opera lights.

Having seen your car in person in Flint, I can tell you that those are standard issue Cadillac opera lights, and that someone, most likely the assembly line worker at Eureka, did put them on the wrong sides of the car. As installed on the factory Cadillac passenger cars, the lights are intended to angle rearward at the top, but the top and bottom edge are supposed to be flat.

In yet another example of auto maker stupidity that makes no sense, I have identified three different types of the Cadillac opera light, even though they all look the same.

The earliest version had an outside set screw on the bottom, that allowed you to remove the lens to access a replaceable light bulb inside. Removing the lens also revealed two simple ordinary screws that attached the light to the car.

That morphed into a very similar light, except that the set screw disappeared, and the light was now mounted to the car by running a nut up a pair of studs from the inside of the car. Since these are not required lights, no provision was made for being able to replace the bulb. Think of them as being a sealed beam opera light.

That style changed yet again to another very similar version, the difference being that the bulb was replaced with an electro luminescent panel that simply glowed when electricity passed thru it. When that version would finally burn out, there was no replacing them at all. If you wanted working opera lights with that version, you replaced the whole unit.

Fortunately, however, these three versions are interchangable with each other, and as so many 80s Cadillacs were built, finding them in junkyards seems to be pretty easy. Whenever I come across a junkyard car with the first version opera light, with the set screw and easily replacable bulb, I grab them. As my opera lights have burned out and needed replacing, I have replaced them with this style, so that future bulb replacements will be a simple matter.
 
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