I had bought these of the auction sight and was told they were in better condition then what they were but I'm not holding it against the guy...Anyhow, both bezels are pitted and one has some damage on the upper lip where my thumb is pointing. Also one has a busted lense and missing socket. I noticed the good lense is thicker then the other and looks a lot better. I'm not sire if it is glass or not? Are these pot metal? If so how do I go aboit repairing them?
Pot metal is expensive to rechrome. Fixing those pits is something only the chromer can do, and it's a lot of steps (= $). Original lenses were plastic. The new repros look slightly different, and if you can't tell the difference, you would be WAY money ahead to buy repros. If you can tell the difference, be prepared to spend probably upwards of $100 each to rechrome those original rings. And good luck finding lenses, probably on Ebay. Edit: follow the link below to see how the repros have a much thicker ridge at the point of the ring.
For what you'd paid to have the chrome bezel fixed, you could buy new. http://www.speedwaymotors.com/1950-Pontiac-Red-Tail-Light-Assembly,3079.html
Sell em to someone else and buy some new ones...yeah, they may be repros, but six months from now will you care...??? R-
Repairing and plating pot metal is an exspensive proposition. Each pit must be drilled out and filled prior to metal polishing, then the multi step plating process. There are many who say they can do it but I've had very good success with Jon Wright's Custom Chrome in Grafton Ohio. Not cheap but they do perfection, and the part won't come back out of shape from over use of copper (something many shops abuse). Look up pictures of Mercury Charlies Sweet Nadine, the pictures tell the whole story.
I can tell the difference too. Here are a couple of pic of originals I'm using on a current build. The lenses were made of a hard plastic called "stimsonite". It's visible in the lense only pic which is an original lense. The ones in the lights are NOS and say "guide" instead. They both say "Guide R-28" at the top of center. Your intact lense may be a glass aftermarket. Those don't reflect anything near as well as these original old plastic lenses. The prisms molded inside are very sharp and reflect way better that molded glass.
50 Pontiac, 39 Ford, and 59 Caddy tail lites are sold at almost any swap meet or speedshop. I have several new pairs of each. Yes, they look slightly different than originals. But who cares? They're cheap.
Here's another option for the bezels. I was having trouble finding a decent pair of 49/50 taillights a few years ago. This was before they were being reproduced. All I could find were pitted bezels and either broken or scratched lenses. I guess we're lucky to have a small aluminum foundry in our town and the owner is usually happy to take money from crazy hot rodders to cast small jobs. So I took one of the better bezels and sanded the pits out and then primered and sanded it as if I was going to paint it. The foundry casted two new aluminum bezels from that one and my good friend John (Flhd31 in the above post) polished them to the beautiful finish shown below. I bought the repo lenses at a swapmeet and although none of these parts are the real thing I don't have a lot of money invested and everything fits together and they fool a lot of people. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=2011646&stc=1&d=1377197564 http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=2011647&stc=1&d=1377197564 http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=2011648&stc=1&d=1377197564 http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=2011649&stc=1&d=1377197564
Mr Villiage Idiot you failed to mention how much "I don't have a lot of money invested" you invested! The repop lites with lenses are very reasonable and since 99% are going on cars other than 1950 Pontiacs it doesn't really matter if they are not perfect duplicates. Mine were supposed to go on my 1948 Chevy panel truck but I am still undecided. I'm starting to like the originals. Or the 39 Ford lites....Or 1948 Chevy car lites...or those 59 Caddy lites. ... I even bought and mocked up PT Cruiser lites until what common sense I still have kicked in! This car buildin sure is difficult.
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