Headlight Bars - Era Specific?

I'm ready to mount the headlights on my channeled '28 coupe and was wondering about headlight bars. I read in the Bishop/Tardel book that headlight were mounted using original headlight bars with just the ends or with the bar attached. My questions are: are bars more prevelant in one era than another? Did they get used in the 40's and not so much in late 50's or early 60's builds? What are the reasons for using or not using the headlight bar.

 

Use the 40s hotrod pic thread as well as the 50s pic thread. Ancient pics do not BS can't change the past ways without a photoshop.

There is so much pure BS floating around on what was used when, so look at old pics.

 

Before we could run down to the local hot rod shop and buy accessory aluminum headlight stands, we had to make our own. One way was to cut up an original Ford headlight mount bar and heat and bend it to work.

Here is a pair we did for my Son's T bucket. This picture is after we cut the middle out, heated and bent them to lay the headlights in the right angle outside the frame, but before we ground the little stubs off to make them prettier.



And this is the headlight bar I used on my 27. On it I cut the ends off outside of the areas where the lights go, and rewelded them back on behind the bar so the bar would be in front of the grille shell.





The advantage to leaving the bar intact is that you will never get any headlight shake going down the road, it holds them perfectly still even over the roughest bumps. The best bar to use is the 32 vs the model a. It has an arched shape to it whereas the earlier bars are straight across, and tend to visually look saggy when viewed from the front. The arched ones do not look that way.


Don

 

The cast aluminum hotrod headlight stands were a late 50-early 60s speedshop accessory. Prior to that it was build your own with lots of variations on the design. I never really cared for the aluminum stands but I do remember when they first came out with the drilled stands for the wires. Before that the wires just hung in the breeze.





I like the older look.

 

I went for a pre-WW2 look and did just as Don described on his 27 ch***is pic. Cut the end off, heat, twist, bend, whatever and then weld them back to the middle part. Whole thing is mounted ahead of the grill as shown.

 

So after scouring the 40's, 50's and 60's pic threads and watching The Hot Rod Story and Deuce DVD's I've summised that headlight bars were used in almost all eras. It seemed mostly dependant on the builder's preference.
Does that make sense?

 

Another excellent source is the Hop Up soft bound book that covers the first 12 months of the magazine.... In it you'll find a lot of different examples including the cast aluminum stands which actually came out in the early 50s.

Bottom line is that it does (did) indeed depend on the builders preference.
I made these using the original fender braces as the base and added a center bar made from a solid Model A tie rod.


I cut the lugs off the end prior to welding the headlight sockets in place...

 

I USED A 31 BAR AND MODIFIED IT.I THINK IF YOU MAKE ONE FROM ORIGINAL FORD PARTS YOU ARE DOIN IT THE OLD WAY BECAUSE THAT'S ALL THEY HAD.