I posted a few options on front plates and ask for your input... http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=516954 ...and got a lot of ideas. While most of you thought I should hang the plate on the garage wall...I'm decided to keep it on. Looking through Don Montgomery's books, you can find a number of cars running no front plates... ...and while it is a timeless look...I wanted to do something that looked a little more 40's. I did find plenty of plates on stock 32 brackets... ...hung from the headlight bar... ...and mounted to the grill...(BTW, this car was a big influence...headlight bar, chrome shocks, filled shell, soon to be louvered hood top, etc) I even found one for Tony (50Fraud)... ...but I wasn't really feeling any of those. So I kept looking...and seeing alot of this... So I went to work and made my own variation of the early 32 brackets that Bruce described...kinda combined with the Walker Morrison car pictured above...and whatever else was running around in my brain.
I started with some 1/8" x 3/4" Stainless flat bar... ...made up this handy dandy jig to form the brackets... I started the first bend in the vice and formed a 90*... Then clamped that into the fixture... and formed it around the stub of heavy wall tube... Drilled some holes and filed one square for carriage bolt... then bent the tail up and here's an almost finished bracket... I did a little sanding and polishing... and ended up with these... Here they are on the spreader bar... and finally with the plate installed... I will get it outside in the daylight tomorrow and take some better pics, but that's it for now. Let me know what you think... Neal
Thanks guys. Glad some of you like it. I pulled it out this morning and snapped a few shots... Now I have to figure out what I am gonna do for louvers on the hood tops... Neal
Very nice detail..... really like your research.... you've got the period well represented. Excellent job....
Neal, I have a question.......you made the first 90 degree bend on one side of the square hole with the vise, and I'm wondering how you were able to make the close second bend on the other side of the square hole, where you say "then bent the tail up" ? I need to make some small weldments very similar with close bends like that, my vise won't accommodate and I haven't figgered an elegant way to approach it yet. TIA They really do look great! Makes me feel bad for voting no plate.....
I didn't take a pic of that part of the process, but what I did was to clamp the "tail" in the vise and then bend the rest of the bracket over. I was only able to go to about 45* before the loop ran into the top of the jaw...so that is kinda how the angle of the plate came about. Since I had already drilled the hole in that short section, it wanted to bend in the middle. To keep it flat, I used a brass drift to hammer on...so I could concentrate to force close to the bend. Hope that helps. Neal
looks good Neal, I had to come up with something a while ago and really wanted to do something simliar to what you did, problem was I have a V spreader bar as I always lusted after the Nitti roadster. in the end I went with hanging the plate off the headlight bar. As with the V bar is just didn't look right. Any reason you didn't use Alloy instead? was it because you felt it would work harden with the weight of the plate bouncing off it?
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