Way back in July I got this idea that it would be neat to hang the nose of a car on my garage wall, light up the headlights and bask in my artistic glory. Then I bought a 1950 Meteor (it's a Canadian mashup of a 49 Merc with a 50 Ford) and after completely parting it out, I cut off the nose of the car about 16" behind the headlight buckets, took off the front bumper and kept the brackets attached, and now I'm staring at this pile of metal that's almost ready to be painted and reassembled, but trying to figure out a good way of mounting it on my wall. So what I'm asking is if you have any pictures or good ideas of how to mount these, because hanging it on picture wire is obviously out of the question. I tried asking some of the businesses that make these display pieces, but I've been told "it's a trade secret". Never thought stickin' a car nose on my wall is akin to knowing the location of Area 51. Hopefully I can get some good ideas because I've got a bunch of late 50's/60's car front clips I can do the same thing to, so they don't get sent to the crusher.
If you have my wife do it for you...She'll use 16p nails to hang small pictures so she'll probably use rail road spikes for this.
That’s the ticket. A French cleat can hold quite a bit of weight and makes it easy to install a wall hung item level. I have this mounted in a French cleat, I made it from steel but a strong piece of oak would work also. I have a 120v to 12 volt dc converter connected to the lights, the converter is plugged into a receptacle that is energized by a wall mounted switch near the entry door of my shop.
Mount L shaped arms (like out of angle iron, tubing round or square then slide the fender / nose over and secure to arms.
Awesome suggestions, I just ran to Home depot to look at their French Cleat kits (300# rating) and I think I can make this work for what I'm doing. Thanks to some other suggestions, I'll likely weld a framework to the inside of the sheetmetal and attach the cleat to that, then I can hang the whole shebang to the wall, and thanks to Kabinenroller, I'll light it up with a power supply I found laying around. Now I'm gettin' excited. Thanks all of you!
I wonder if you could tack some tabs inside the metal near the edge, then cut out a piece of plywood to shape, and screw the tabs to the wood. Then you'd have a nice flat surface to attach the cleat to. And the wood might hold the shape of the panels well, if you fit it all carefully
We cut strips of plywood 3/4"x3" with one edge cut at 45°,cut at desired length,,,it was our cleat...strong and cheap
Mine didn't weigh much, old nose from the last bandit I restored. I built steel brackets that bolted to the nose at the cowl support location and hung on the wall on a couple large nails. Easy to hang and remove by myself and I didn't damage the nose in case I take it to the swap meet like the last one. Chain would work too. Lights work, I used an old lawn light timer and bulbs to lite up the parking lights. I have outlets up high for signs and such so it was easy to plug in. Eastbound and down!
If you can reach up under you front end, put two/ three large hooks into your wall studs and put a turn buckle in and draw it up tight against the wall. Bones
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