Thanks for the input. It’s pretty certain that I date myself frequently, I figure anyone that knows what I’m talking about already knows, and those that are too young probably won’t care, or may take the time to do a Google search.
I was introduced to “Dagmar’s” by my next door neighbor in 1958 when I was ten years old. I thought it was pretty considerate of him to explain the relationship of the car parts to the real lady, but it would be years later before I ever saw a picture of her or knew who she was.
A while back I was contemplating how popular bumper bullets were for a period in time. It occurred to me it shouldn’t be too hard to adapt some to the front bumper guards on my truck, if they looked good when finished.
I looked at every car that originally came with bumper bullets, Cadillac, Buick, Mercury, Lincoln, Packard and a few others. None of the factory designs were practically adaptable to my truck. So I started searching for bullet shaped shells. I went through photos of all the mid 1930’s headlight shells and they are all too big. I finally ended up focusing on a specific outdoor lamp holder – Hubbell model 308. It looks like this:
I think it may be obsolete, as the only units I found in current inventory are 309 models, which have an extension on the front holding a sealed lamp assembly. I found two 308’s available on Ebay from two different sellers. Unfortunately one was in its box, so I really couldn’t match it up with the other one until they both arrived when I discovered a minor setback – they don’t match exactly, apparently since one is dated 1994 and the other is dated 1996 or 1998. One had somewhat of a point on the end with two flat areas cast into the shell for attaching the lamp socket. The other one is flat on the end, so I’ll need to create a mold and cast a matching nose once the pointed one is finish shaped. The overall shape is identical except for what is going to end up being the front tip, but when they are finished they will look exactly the same.
Here are a couple of pictures showing the flat nose untouched shell next to the in-process modified piece:
And here’s what the white one looked like the first time it was trial fitted to the bumper guard, showing how much work is required to get this to fit properly:
Here’s what the gray one (#2) looks like as of tonight. It has been sliced up to fit over the bumper guard, and the mounting bracket has been removed and filled with JB Weld (same as what has already been done on the white bullet):
And this is what the inside looks like:
The nose in each bullet has two 1/4x20 bolts long enough to attach brackets that will eventually hold these to the guards. The JB Weld filler can be seen in the bottom of the bullet ahead of the cutout area. This shell also has two holes (one on either side) for mounting the new extension lamp - those will require filling tomorrow.
The indentations on the nose of the white bullet have been filled with JB Kwik (no photo yet). Tomorrow they will be rough shaped, and touched up with Rage filler before final shaping/priming.
This is the first stand back and take a look at it photo:
The first thing that jumped out at me is the bottom of the bullet needs to be flush with the top of the bumper, they are too high in this photo. This requires cutting the top couple inches off the guards to lower the bullets. Slicing up the guards commits me to the project.
Whether these bullets survive the cut or not I’m not sure yet. I am however convinced this design will work, so even if I have to start over with different shells, I’m going to continue until I have a traditional pair of bumper bullets poking out on the front of my truck.
More to follow.