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I have seen several early '42s with the smooth hood sides, but don't remember seeing the emblem mounting holes. Did all of them have the emblems?
As willowbilly3 said, they could be cut out of stainless sheet with a laser cutter and TIG weld some studs on the back. They could also be cut from aluminum and polished and chrome plated, done properly they would be almost impossible to tell from an original.
Mark
Thanks for the pic Bernette. There are none on the aftermarket. They are really fragile so they didn't last long. Your hood with the holes drilled is also rare. I am surprised that Chuck's Trucks had NOS items for this. Keep watching there may be more!
To answer 49fordv8f4: These emblems were put on the new '42 Ford Trucks. Then, WW2 broke out and Ford sold all of the trucks that they had at the time to the military branches. After these originals were sold, the truck hoods were simplified for the war with most having only the top trim piece and the trim on the nose with the latch. No holes were drilled for the side emblem or the side spear. There were also no holes for the parking lights. Then eventually they had the swing out windshield so the soldiers could shoot forward. The dash was also changed. And on and on.
Tacoma, the picture I posted is indeed a pot metal script Ford, painted black to contrast with the red hood, and fastened to the hood with threads added to the back of the pot metal and nuts inside the hood. The original mounting was with clips, but the script piece frequently fell off. One of the local fire departments has a 1943 fire engine originally delivered to the military that has pot metal script Fords on the hood. The truck started out black with tacoma cream trim, was painted OD by American LaFrance, and red by the FD that purchased it from Uncle Sam.
Thanks for clarifying Mike! I can see the sharpness on the edges of the Ford script the closer I look.
I am always interested in more facts about these early years of trucks. It sounds like they had a lot of the scripts on hand to last into the '43 model. Those studs on the back should have been threaded in the first place. The clips were a bad design for the fragile metal.
Laser cut wouldn't have such rounded profile, would it. My son used to talk about 3d printers. Never saw one, but could a 3d printer make the emblems out of something? ok now it's really late....zzzzzzzzzz
This isn't a close up of the script although it is visible. A flat bed or tray bed as it is called down under in NZ. They call these trucks jailbars there. He chrome plated the script.
Here is a post that I found on Jalopy Journal when a truck owner asked about the year of his truck:
it is a 1942, '42 is the first of what we kiwi's call the 'jailbar' named after its grill bars. Yours has no ford script pressed into the hood sides ('42 is only year without it) the later ones (up to '47) all had the script in the rear of the hood sides below the swage line.
good luck with your project, I have one also. Have fitted jaguar ifs and irs and 327 chevy and th350.
Thanks Matt, You are almost there. If you find one of these Ford Scripts that were an addition at the factory to the hood sheetmetal please take a close up pic of it and post it here. You will only find these on a '42 hood. Notice that the bottom of the F is connected to the o on this version.
This is another pic that I have:
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