Help! Mystery Parts ID

HAMBers,

I've been digging through some of Dad's old boxes looking for more '32 parts and ran across this stuff. Clearly, NOT '32 parts, but looks like good swap meet material. Unfortunately, I don't know what this stuff is... But I'll bet you guys do!

Can you help me out by filling in the blanks?

Hubcap -

Hood ornament -

Bumper guard -

Dome light -

Speedo -

Thanks a bunch!





<O></O>
<O</O
<O></O>
<O</O

<O></O>
<O</O

 

Hubcap is 53 Olds

 

Hmmm 180mph???......

 

Hood ornament looks mid 40's Buick


Speedo should fit most 30's 40's Fords,

"Maring and Company" was a speed shop in Los Angeles that modified speedometers,
tachometers and gauges for salt flat racers starting in the 50's.
If you look back through old rodding/car magazines (of that era) you will see their advertisements.

The speedo itself is almost certainly Stewart Warner (for Ford)
and will fetch good coin.

... Shown with matching era 8000 rpm Stewart Warner Tach

















.

 

Did your dad race Mojave/Elmirage?
That speedo is obviously intended for and possibly from a speed record seeking hotrod.


Bell Auto parts was a distributor for Maring and Company, I have a few old Bell Auto Parts catalogs but they are not close by and I can't recall if Bell listed them in their ads or catalogs way back then.

Will look thru my catalogs this weekend and post if I find anything.
.

 

Wow, moe, I never realized it, kinda makes sence since it looks mid 30's ford ish, I cant remember the year, but my dad would KILL for it, I'd be interested if it was sold reasonably, i might have some trading stock of early ford that id let go for something that cool too.....

 

Thanks for the insight Moe.

So, since SW was an OEM supplier, did this unit start out in a factory car and then get modified, or is this a legitimate aftermarket piece?

Also, the face on this unit is purple in color. It looks too uniform to have faded from black... Is this correct?

 

Anybody got the down low on the dome light and/or bumper guards?

 

Don't have any old HRM's here to look...is Maring the company that always had a little ad in the back offering high speed conversions of early Ford speedos and also conversions of same into tachometers?
There were several color variants in the '37-39span of the basic speedo that I think that is...I think it is a brownish one with some fading.
Look on back and see if it is stamped...Ford got speedometers from several manufacturers, including SW.(Just noticed question already answered above. And whyinhell do I have an office with no 1953 HRM's in it//)

 

Your gauge does look faded.....


I think that since Maring supplied various speedos/gauges for use with Ford/GM/Cyrco etc, the most likely scenario would be that customers supplied their own (exchange basis) as well as many gauges were salvaged at the wreckers.

I honestly think that them (Maring) buying new speedo's may have been cost prohibitive in the day.

Also consider that Ford paid good money for their own in house engineers to design the gauge so I doubt that Stewart Warner would have been able to supply Ford Engineered/copyright speedo's to other (minor/small) manufacturers for anything less than full retail/replacement cost.

-Yes, SW could sell you a replacement for full retail but would not sell a few dozen for the same 1/2 cost/bulk price like Ford and other large manufacturers paid.

 

dome light looks like a 49-52 Chevrolet, maybe 53 and 54 as well as other GM cars from the same era.

 

I think you are on the right track, Maring ran a small ad in many car/rod/custom magazines in the day.

Ford did use many manufacturers, Stewart Warner and Waltham come to mind
but in my humble opinion the gauge in question is almost certainly a Stewart Warner designed by Ford for Ford.

 

OK, looked a little closer and the coloration is perfectly uniform. If it IS faded, it's not from lighting.

Also, after scrubbing off the dirt, the unit is marked as a Delco It has a number inkstamped around the bezel of "55122 5 8"

 

I'm guessing that because of the riveted brackets for light bulbs, this is a factory setup out of something. Problem is, nothing (not even a Duesenberg) ever dreamed about 180 mph. I was thinking some Euro supercar, but they wouldn't be measured in MPH. If Waring did make aftermarket gauges, this is a pretty sweet item for any hot rod or Bonneville car.

 

Is the speedometer possibly calibrated in kilometers? 180kph is about 110mph.

 

Does not say one way oe the other.... As a Delco unit modified by Maring, it seems unlikely it would be metric.

Also, this thing has a trip meter. It looks like the hole on the back of the unit once held some kind of button or knob. Perhaps to reset? It generally lines up with the trip wheels on the face.

Do we still think this unit is early Ford? It will fit in a 4 3/8 hole in the dash.

 

It is in mph, believe me this is not a metric item.

 

The company I referred to rebuilt stock Ford speedos; the ad did not specify limiting to a specific supplier, so I assume they could do all of them. The speedos from different suppliers interchanged as units, but the innards were specific to the supplier.
My '48 Ford is metric, and runs out at 160, about the same as 100MPH. 180 KPH would have been too high for a Ford until much later.
I've seen SW, Delco, and Waltham speedos, I think there were one or two more at least in Model A days. In my random pile of '32 speedos, most of the good ones seem to be Delco...no idea if that is happenstance or superiority!
Many early Fords had resettable trip odometers.

 

I agree with 49RF on the dome lamp