Projects The bucket of ugly! A de-uglifying thread...

Now you are fooling us, cold in Arizona ??? Magic having a good steer box and allows you to feel the road as you drive at speed.

 

Yes Whip we are expecting record setting cold the next few days all the way to south U.S.A. My roadster is put away for the winter here in central California. But I am a wimp. Expecting snow tomorrow.

Gary

 

If you used model A or 32 lights you could get one with the license plate light on the bottom and mount them rotated 90 deg to shine at the center mounted plate.

I'm imagining this all under the bed. Then you don't have an extra do dad on the car but the plate is lit. I guess you could even use "license plate light" equipped lamps on both sides and shine it from both sides if you really wanted to make sure you could see it well.


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Those taillamp brackets are most often seen on the back end of 50s-60s-70s Ford pickups with box and fenders. They bolt to the stake pocket. There are several different lengths and some more slender brackets of this style used on Ford Pickups from 35-47.
They all accept taillamps from 29-36 Ford passenger cars or pickups through the early 50s. The longer brackets must be used to fit the "shield" style Ford pickup lights.
The 29-34 Ford pickup taillamp brackets are forged steel and mount under the bed side using the same taillamps. These are also great for trailers.

 

I'm not a fan of LED lights.... They just don't have the brightness of conventional lamps, particularly in bright sunlight and their off-axis light is usually poor. They have one advantage though; if your wiring is inadequate to the taillights, LEDs are usually 'all or nothing'. As long as the voltage is over their 'threshold', they'll light with full brightness (and due to their low current draw, voltage drop is rarely an issue). A incandescent lamp will show as 'dim' with low voltage, but with full voltage will be brighter. If you can find sockets that accept the newer halogen taillight lamps, those are the deal...

 

i think instead of the chrome pickup brackets shown above id do something like youd do in the front.

split a headlight bar and bend them so you can bolt them onto the side of the rail instead of on the back cross member. then you dont attract attention to some random bracket.

I know the tail lights use a flat to mount them instead of a cup like the front but im sure you could figure something out that would work, or maybe there is something like this out there already that could be made to work.

I'd just have a hard time having a light bracket that visually competes with the light itself

 

Last couple of days have been pretty damn cold out here. Driving that T qualifies as hard core right now.

 

man, if it snows in So-Cal and AZ before it snows here, I am gonna piss myself laughing!!

 

So Cal Speed shop sells these for '37 tail lights and they look good.
http://www.est1946.com/1937fordtaillightstands.aspx

It's all opinions on form and function. It will be interesting to see what Louvers comes up with.

 

as well you should!

 

A few weeks ago Chip was complaining about 120+ temps now it's about to freeze. Some people you can't please.

 

Now I know this maybe off topic a little but I thought it better to ask here because you guys seem to know your sh!t. What would be considered 50's/60/'s style wheels and tyre combos. I know thats probably like asking how long is a piece of string but from previous posts I get the impression there are some diffinitive ya's and nays'. So if you have some pics you can show us that would help. Not trying to hijack the thread as I think it fits the tone of discussion.

 

First my friend you need to specify what type of car you are asking about? Diff cars command diff wheel and tire combos. Putting the wrong wheel and tire combo on a car would be like putting a continental kit on a Model A roadster highboy

 

Actually painted steel reversed wheels were pretty much '50s. Some of the show cars had chromed "punched"/ reversed wheels. Late '50s into the '60s started showing alloy wheels. I'll let the '60s experts expand on that.

Gary

 

Again, I usually don't post pics of my non-HAMB friendly t-bucket...but I figure the Trad-Nazis have already abandoned this thread as hopeless. Chip, you might even recognize elements of the car, as it was built by Carl at the Roadster Factory in Phoenix. Here is my set up. It keeps everything down low and off the tailgate, plus it distracts from the coil-overs.

 

Sorry, roadsters, buckets, modifieds, .... hot rods... not kustoms or fifties/sixties sedans, does that narrow it down?

Were wires a fifties thing or more of a 70's+ afterthought?

 

that's the one thing I can't stand about mine, but I think I dislike the plate idea over it just as much. I like the plate tucked under the box.

 

Lotta guys are gonna hate this.
Based on scouring thousands of old photos, wires were somewhat popular till the late forties, with steel wheels outnumbering them by a substantial margin. By the early fifties, they were an abberation. Forties to early fifties, 16" steel wheels with caps, and sometimes trim rings. Mid-fifties to around '62/'63 15" steelies with either "beanies" or full wheel covers, with the full covers out-numbering beanies by about 10/1. Starting around 1960, chrome reverse started coming on, five spoke cast mag type wheels hit around '63.

 

No.

 

Just about what I was going to say, but I will add that in the early to mid fifties, you see a lot more 16" wheels. Later fifties stuff tended to go to 15".

As far as Magnesium wheels go, Halibrand was around since '48, but you really didn't see their stuff on drag cars (and therefore street stuff) until about '55 or so. Again, 16" like would be the rule for the early fifties, after '55 or so 15". This is the one thing that drives me a bit nuts about my "temporary Halibrands", their damn nice and not just a little rare, but they are from an era about 10-15 years before the time point I'm setting with my car. If they were 15", they'd be there more or less permanently. Also, with regards to Halibrands, the "no hole" or "smoothie" like my set were the common ones right up to about '58 or '59 when the pattern got some cooling holes added, First four, then five, all small. By about '62 or '63, the windows got bigger, and that Halibrand is called to this day the Sprint. American Racing started up in about late '59 or so, with their mag five spoke. They were an over night sensation to say the least, and really in my opinion the first mag wheel to really become common on street driven cars. Just prior to that, when Romeo Pallimeades was still at the helm, he put out a mag wheel called the "standard", with four windows that were sort of square shaped, with out the lips around the windows common to the Halibrands. Romeo also put out the first version of the brakeless 10 spoke wheel for front use, then when American took over, they became 12 spokes. Please don't ask my opinions of the current bolt on twelve spoke wheels, as that never ends well....

So that was a bit of a mouth full, But it places the two basic types of Magnesium wheels for an early sixties 'Bucket as either Halibrands, or Americans (or earlier Pallimeadis, but you'd really have to know your stuff to know what they are).

Things got more interesting in '63 - '65, as that's when the "composite" wheel industry really got it's feet on the ground. Suddenly, everybody that had casting and machine capabilities was making custom wheels. ET, Radir, Cragar, Hurst, Astro, Crestline, and many, many more became available in this time frame.

Another thing I'll add to the earlier '50s style wheels too is full hubcaps. In the late fifties, one trend I saw while digging was the adoption of full wheel covers from various make cars, and some custom as well. You honestly didn't see them as often on fenderless cars, but I can think of a few examples. Full Moon discs were out there too. This seemed to go through the early sixties as well.

The last thing I'll add, is white walls.... A fairly controversial subject here on the board. My take on it is this: Early fifties stuff, they weren't very common. By the mid fifties, fairly wide whites were very popular, but seemed to get just a shade narrower as the decade progressed. By about '60 or '61, at least in California, the Wide white was dying a slow death. Yes, you still see them on cars from that era and later, but not in the shear numbers you see them on cars from the mid fifties. It seems by sometime in late '61 or so, the change was made across the board to very narrow whites, or none at all. As I said before, that is my take on things as someone who has spent a ton of his life researching stuff, and has been enamored with California hot rods since he was toddling. I in no way shape or form am saying that I am an expert, that I was there, or THIS IS THE WAY IT WAS! I'll also add that this stuff is and always was highly regional. Wide whites seem to have hung on lots longer in the Midwest and east coast.

The last taboo with this deal is wide whites on Mag type wheels... If you had asked me that about five years ago, you probably would have gotten a profanity laced tirade about how that was a mortal sin, and never, ever, ever, should it happen to a nice car.... I have mellowed on that point. I used to say that every now and then it would happen, amd every now and then it would actually look bitchin', then cite the example of the "Little Coffin" show car that was a Midwest build. as I've come to know more about the time line of mag wheels, I'm noticing more and more wide or medium whites in use on mag wheels between late '59 and '61 or so. my favorite is still Bill Roland's redo of Tommy Ivo's T-Bucket. Damn it, as against that combo as I was for so many years, it just flat works on that car!!!

Tirade done...

 

Not very often I disagree with Chip, but this is one time I do...

Take a gander at this thread, starting with post #33, continuing through to around post #72.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?p=8533890#post8533890

 

I too can't find fault in Bill Roland's take on Ivo's roadster.

 

"Damn it, as against that combo as I was for so many years, it just flat works on that car!!!"

And that's where a lot of people get stumped, when they ask if something was popular. There's always an exception to every rule. I think you can be period correct, if that's what you're after, but there is room for expansion, if style and proportion aren't sacrificed.

 

Actually, Ford type and accessory wires were more of a thirties thing, prewar. Just after the introduction of the '40 Ford, steel disc type wheels became the "rage" for well dressed hot rods. they were cheap, stronger and looked different than what had been around before, so they got snapped up fast. I have been told that at the end of '40, they were a bit hard to get for a few months 'cause we were all buying them up.

I have a good friend that was on the lakes just immediately before, and then lots and lots after the war. He kept referring to "clown cars" showing up at the lakes after the war. He would just drop that term in the conversation, and one day I asked him to define the term for me. "Well, any car that was crapped together and just flat shoddy. The biggest tip off though was if you were still runnin' wire wheels in '46... That was Farmboy stuff in those days!" From the mouths of our elders...

Wire wheels made a come back in the late sixties via a club in Southern California called the "Early Times". They built tons of cars that were mostly full fendered, and ran Buick Skylark chrome wires. They were pretty rare on fenderless cars at that time though. The look proved to be so popular that a company started in the early seventies called TRU-SPOKE as a sort of new replacement for the by then rare Buicks. They do look pretty close to the same with the small cap and forty spoke architecture, but when you know what to look for you can see the difference. That was THE wheel to have for your resto-rod in the seventies.


Now to every body, as the "M/C" on this thread, I am hereby declaring a four day moratorium on picking on Kiwis!

 

Nah, your not even going to get and argument out of me on that one, 'cause like I said, you do see examples of the full wheel covers on fenderless cars. That little '27 bucket I posted a couple of weeks ago from your neck of the woods by Ralph Mellenchuck is my favorite example.

 

I disagree with "examples". It was the dominant style. One thing I take very seriously is when someone asks what was happening in a particular period, I really see that as a responsibility, and I know you think pretty much the same way. Take a look at the exchange of posts on that thread between 50fraud and myself, and the photos I posted, as well as on the later posts, the dates and places. It will probably change your perceptions. Are reversed, painted steelies with beany caps(which are bordering on unobtainium now) period-correct for the late fifties? No doubt about it. Were they the dominant style? HELL NO! If someone asked me to define a typical late fifties hot rod, full wheelcovers would be part of that description.
I have really done my homework on this stuff, because I take the history seriously.

 

T buckets are the one place you dont see them very often, but T-buckets didnt REALLY start to take off in popularity until around '62/'63. I wouldn't really call this one a T-bucket, but its one of my favorites. I think the aftermarket cones look really good on this car...

 

Thanks for the input guys, that does narrow down my choices of wheels to look for at swop meets.
"
Quote "Now to every body, as the "M/C" on this thread, I am hereby declaring a four day moratorium on picking on Kiwis!"

Na... its all good.. we're tough, we can take it

 

Ok,I'm first hand info cuz 50's n 60's is were I started building rods n customs,,just so ya know about hubcaps an rods,at lest in Florida. in the late 50's and early 60's,hubcaps were consitored A.O.K. to run on a rod=but needed to be racey looking,like 1953 Studebaker cones { the very best] or any other smooth airflow looking cap for hotrods ,but for customs= caps with some type of big flipper was the thing. Lancer's {the very best]
Few of us had the $ for chrome rims and just paint didn't get it,so we had to find what we could that looked right,chrome dome center cap and a outer chrome ring was great too,but harder to fine a fit set [ key word is find,not buy]
The fancy alum or mag rims were very few and far between tell starting into mid 60's but for a show car at times yup.

 

take Florida styling tips at your own risk haha.

-meaning in general not just picking on you-


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