AFAIK, the clips are supposed to remain somewhat loose and can be slid around between the retaining ring and beauty ring. I guess you could drill and rivet them to the retaining ring.
They're a nice look on some cars, odd-looking on others. To me, they look best on Cobras with racing trim (meatballs, stripes, decals, etc.)
I'm going to replace my sealed beam headlights with H4 units after all the inspections (last major one is tomorrow). I might go with the tripode repops - they look good on any era car, IMHO.