Headlight bucket finish on 54 C&K

[alanmende]

Hello group,

If the rain ever stops here in PA, I'm going to sandblast the headlight bucket from our '54 Starliner. (Yeah, I know I ought to glass bead them, but I don't have a bead blast cabinet, only a pressure blaster.) My question is how were the headlight buckets originally finished? Bare metal? Zinc or cad plate? Paint? And one more thing, since our car is undercoated, would the back side of the buckets have been undercoated, too?

Kindest regards,

Alan Mende
Hummesltown, PA

[N8N]

They were originally silver plated metal, I assume zinc. Yes, the fenders appeared to be undercoated *after* the installation of the headlights.

nate

--
55 Commander Starlight
http://members.cox.net/njnagel

[Tom Bredehoft]

The buckets in my 53 are black painted steel, in my 55 are semi-gloss aluminum. The backs on the 55 were heavily coated with undercoat, as were the fenders.

I don't know what material the buckets were in 54.


[img=left]http://www.alink.com/personal/tbredehoft/Bothcars4.jpg[/img=left]
Tom Bredehoft
'53 Commander Coupe
'55 President State Sedan
(Under Construction) 134 hrs.
'05 Legacy Ltd Wagon
All Indiana built cars

[wally]

I bought some new late 50's headlight buckets from sasco, and they were galvanized.

"You Can't Have Everything--Where Would You Put It?" ---comedian Steven Wright

[jbwhttail]

After blasting mine to the original zinc coating I used a clear coat to protect them from the elements. The buckets were added after paint so thye could not have had color on them.

It is an addiction!

[alanmende]

Thanks to everyone for their responses.

Alan

[rockne10]

The buckets in my '51 and '53 were originally black and heavily undercoated after installation.

Brad Johnson
Pine Grove Mills, Pa.
'33 Rockne 10, '51 Commander Starlight, '53 Commander Starlight

[Jeff_H]

The rusted remains of the ones in my '53 were painted black or dark grey, hard to tell. I used aluminum ones (they are made of alumimum) from a '55 sedan in the restoration. Both were covered with undercoating. The steel ones rusted from the inside out it seemed. I have seen a NOS one a vendor had and it was galvanized or maybe zinc plated steel.

Something to keep in mind when looking for these if you are replacing them:

The "early" ones have a tab with a slot that sticks out on the top and there is a "hook" on the chrome headlamp bezal that engages it to hold it on. The "late" ones don't have this but instead the fender has a sort of slot stamped out. Hard to describe. The reproduction bezels I bought in the 90s for my car had 2 "hooks" in the box: 1 long and 1 short that would then be used depending on what your bucket/fender was. I think the shorts go with the early buckets and longs with the late but can't recall for sure now. I have no idea when that change was made but the '55 buckets had the tab/slot on them.

Jeff in ND

'53 Champion Hardtop