anyone have a step by step on doing this? i understand that the rings are pot metal and i've heard that you can use panel adhesive and fibergl*** to do it. i'm a visual learner so i'm hoping someone has some photo do***entation or a tech tread for this job. thanks.
You will need to use '52 or '53 rings which are steel. See my '52 Victoria build thread: 1952 Victoria Build-Up Part 1 Good luck!
okay... so how do you deal with the peaks in the fenders? i dont have a set of 52-3 rings handy to figure it out visually... can you just flow the peaks in to the 52-3 rings with duraglas?
Just look at a few on kustomrama or riksters site. you don't really need to fake the peaks, but if you wanted them, it might be best for shape some steel instead of kitty hair'ing something up, but I like them with just frenched rings. 1952-4 mercury are through same rings, and repops can be had from night prowlers.
so then the question is whats the best way to deal with the peaks in the fenders? flatten them out? blend them away? like i said, without a set of rings i'm trying rael hard to visualize how things would be accomplished. mainly because i'm trying to decide if frenching the headlights is a h***le i wanna get involved with on this particular car.
Yes, the earlier rings are substantially different from the '54 rings and may require changes to the fenders to get them to flow together smoothly. If you want to french the rings, however, you've little choice but to use the early rings and make the necessary mods to get them to flow smoothly. CC's advice is solid. Substantial reshaping should be done in metal, but minor smoothing can be done with Dura-Glas with little fear...in my humble opinion. daddyo's diner used panel adhesive on his and, as he was advised, experienced ghost lines in the final finish. Not terrible, but avoidable if the parts are welded together.
I tried the panel adhesive on my '54 and for some reason, very small cracks developed between the headlight ring and the fender. It seemed the adhesive just wouldn't bond properly to the pot metal. Ground them back off and welded '53 Merc. Just tweaked them a little on the peaks and they worked out fine............ at least I think they are fine.
Now, what you can also do (which I don't really suggest, but hear me out), you can braze them on. I have a friend who built a '56 ranchero and brazed merc wagon tailights on in 1965, and they just started to crack in around 2008. Again, I don't suggest this, I really suggest using the earlier ford/merc ring route, but its just another idea.
I talked to a guy who did the merc rings. He said he basically heated the ridges and used hammer and dolly to flatten them. Sound about right?
Yeah we took a dolly to mine not a whole lot of work on them though, just a little to make them subtle
Isnt there a company out there doing shaved headlight kits for our cars now? Like 125 for the pair? Joe, aka sickboymesa, and I were talking about it just this past weekend.
The '54 Ford I saw at the Sanderson Ford show last weekend had frenched in headlights from a '57 Ford which have no peak it was a real beauty,I invited Him to join us so hopefully we will see some pics of this car soon.
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