Cool McCool's Garage

Yesterday, I spent most of the day putting the ’63 Caddy headlight in the ‘Bird. I felt good about the job when I left the shop, but looking at the photos later when I did a blog entry, I wasn’t happy with the way they looked.

The lights are fine, the bezels are beautiful, and I reshaped fenders to fit the bezels, but even with the ureshaping, the fender and bezel didn’t look right together. The fender didn’t “roll” in enough at the top, which I did nothing with, and even the bottom, which I had rolled in further.

So, today I cut everything apart and did both sides over. I cut a BIG slice out of the front fender above the bumper, at the top, and the little ledge at the bottom, and completely reshaped the fender from wheel opening to the headlight bezel. I made new filler pieces to fill the big gap, and got it all back together in time for dinner.

So, NOW I’m happy with it, and can move on to the next job, modifying the left rear fender to match what I did on the right side. There’s more, the cowl and dash need to be finished, but I feel good about the headlight job now.

The photo below shows the problem.  There’s a “ledge” on the fender all the way round the bezel,  It just doesn’t look right,   I can do better…

This is not right.

Better.

Much better.