are they the same? is there a difference between car and truck grills? sort of hoping it's a one size fits all.
car & truck grilles are completely different,..39 truck grilles have a smaller top bar plus one more grille bar than 40's...
there's a pickup that's been sitting at the business next door for quite a while. from the belt line and headlights i narrowed it down to 39-40. it's missing the grill. thought i'd check to see how hard it would be to locate one before i went and tried to talk to him about it. will a 39 grill fit a 40 and vice versa? any pics? i don't trust carnut
38 Chevy and 39 Chevy and 40 Chevy and 41 Chevy P***enger Car Grills are each different. Green 2-door C-dan = 1939 Chevy. Red Cabriolet = 1940 Chevy. Red Coupe sans fenders =1939 Chevy White Coupe + 1940 Chevy
they look close, but the part number is different (JC and KC are 39 and 40 trucks). But it looks like the hole that the grille fits into, might be the same, eh?
there is a lot of differences between a 39 truck and a 40 truck. The top trim bar is different along with the grill shell. the 39 has one extra bar in the grille than a 40 to make up the difference of the top bar. the 39 has bulbs for the headlights and the 40 is sealed beams along with park lights on the front fenders. Original grilles are getting tougher to find especially a nice one. the bottom bars are usually all bent or missing. You can get repop grilles for either year but I have not tried one, but have heard they do not fit well. what I have done on the last 2 grilles is use a couple of top bars to replace the lower messed up bars. all the bars from top to bottom are the same except where the crank hole is.
although,,,,,,,some trucks do look good with car sheet metal up front..........i feel like germ with all those commas and periods. it looks like this truck is only missing the grill, i don't want to source a whole dog house. thanks for all the replys.
Hard to tell what’s under the booger welded rear bumper and frame extension. Be aware that finding a good grille is rare.
i know, piecing one together from several, i've seen a couple that went the way of the custom tube grill, maybe use the front sheet metal from 39 chevy car, and then the ultimate pig playing dress up, a lasalle grill. might need to pay the guys on the photoshop thread a visit
Of course the '39 and '40 Chev car grilles are totally different, but also totally different from a truck grille too. But you might find some truck grilles that are maybe crunched down low, or rusted down low, and use more than one to build one decent grille. When I was building my '39 Chev coupe all I found was $1000-$2000 grilles, or ugly billet grilles I'll never use. But I did find 3 halves of grilles that all had damage or rot down in the lower 4"-5" of each. I gave $135 for the three damaged halves. Fortunately two halves were left and right, so I cut off the bottom grille bars, and then cut grille bars off the third half from higher up that were straight. I trimmed the grille bars to length and took them to a guy who has done tig welding for me, and paid him $30 to tig weld the bars to each half. Since I'm always frugal with my builds I didn't have it chromed, and just shot them with wheel paint instead.
and just to throw something else into the mix, 39 and 40 GMC are different from each other AND the grills are not interchangeable with Chevrolet . You can put a whole grill and surrounding grill housing from any of the 39-40 either chevy or GMC as long as it is changed with the hood top of the same year. kind of useless info as finding the GMC parts are very rare
I used some expanded aluminum on my GMC as the original, in my opinion, is not as attractive as the Chevy grills. It does make for good garage art though.
Ask photoshop thread for a grille of vertical bars. Drill the band so you can just tack weld the bars on the outside and it won't show
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