Question for the custom guys. What are the olds bezels made of? My 55 Ford's bezels are made from some heavy, non-metallic casting. Just wondering if the Olds are weldable? Or do you just take part of the Olds fenders and graft them on? Just curious what is involved in this swap.
you use part of the olds fender and the bezels are pot metal so the remain chromed like Lee Pratt did on his 52 chev
If you don't have the Olds fenders you could shape that part with small rod and sheetmetal. Finding nice rings that aren't all pitted is the hard part. I found a decent pair at a swap a decade ago and got GOOD money for them.
As others stated, use a bit of a fender or the round rod and shape metal. I remember recently that one the newer custom magazines had a tech article on adding 56 Olds bezels to a fender with round rod, it was either Traditional Rod & Kulture or Car Kulture Deluxe.
If you look at some of Richard Zochi's cars, when he ran 56 Olds lights, they were trimmed down a bit and looked pretty good.
I believe the bezels are reproduced now, and much cheaper than having a pitted set rechromed. Certainly the easiest way to do it would be to have a chunk of the front fenders to graft in, it's a fairly complex shape, the back sides are not flat and the depth of the bulb isn't even with the back side of the bezel so it would take some work to fab it from scratch. Definitely an attractive headlight design though, looks pretty when done right.
aka "pot metal" This shows a Sam Barris custom using '55 Ford units on the headlights https://kustomrama.com/wiki/Sam_Barris'_1952_Ford There have been customs that used ones from '56 Fords both might be easier to find than the Olds. You might want to check this article out too: https://www.hotrod.com/articles/joining-pot-metal-steel-sheet-bodywork/
Yes, as others have said, the headlight rings are pot metal. Both 55's (without the peak) and '56's (with the peak) are being reproduced and available from Fusick Automotive. Nice quality, I have them on my Chevy. http://www.fusickautomotiveproducts.com/products.asp?dept=86&val=2 When Myron built my Chevy, a friend of his gave him a set of '55 Olds rings, but he didn't have the fender parts. He filled the gap with round rod and sheet metal. When we put the '56's on, I had the Olds fender sections and used the whole top of the fender with the peak all the way back to the cowl.