I was thinking about doing the "bullet delete" like yours but i dont have the cash to get the bumper re-chromed after smoothing the flat spots over. I dig the factory bullet delete plates though, makes it more period since most 57's didnt have rubber bullets stock. I had to cut off a perfectly good pair of rubber "pasties" because the bolts were so rusty, but i never liked the way they looked anyways.
It's far from a bolt on, I did it to mine back in 1984. My memory has gone fuzzy but there is some chopping needs to be done at the ends, it's a heavy die cast piece too. I had to use inverted underhood pins to keep my hood closed, there was no way to keep the stock hood latch. It's a classic mod that will never go out of style.
I kept the stock hood latch but I had to pancake the grill cross bar and fabricate all new mounting points for the grill to bolt to.
I had to rebuild the lower splash apron with some pickup points for the buick grille mounts.The top of the grille fit under the chevy cross bar with a bit of grinding on the crossbar(but i think the crossbar ended up a bit higher).I used the chevy hood latch after sectioning the latch mounting area to raise the latch up into the hood.I even used the chevy hood latch plate but had to build a support to go down to the splash pan.
I probably should have kept the mounting tabs on the bottom of the grill. I made mounts on each end and one in the center that i cut out of some really thick cast iron and bolted it to the bottom of the grill and to the splash pan hat channel. It's mounted more solidly than the stock grill was at least, and uses half the bolts.
Scruff that is the best conversion I have seen! I would love to do that treatment but my eye always gets drawn to the center grille bars that don't seem to quite match up and that always bothers me. Yours looks like its one piece and the bullet removal looks bitchen also. I'm inspired now. Pat
WOW love to see a 2 year old thread of work I did resurrected. The owner of this car and I did this together and I can tell you it is no easy task.
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