The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Repairing Bullet Taillights

I'm finally ready to put bullet taillights on my '55 1st Suburban. I've collected four of them over the last couple of years. Today I looked at them and found three of the four have at least one significant problem.

Two of them are missing the little tab on the inside that has a threaded hole for the lens screw to go into to. Has anyone figured out an easy way to replace that tab? One of them part of the rivet is still there, the other has only an empty hole in the shell.

On the third one of the mounting studs is broken. These are small bolts that appear to be swedged (sp?) into place. I don't know how to remove it without causing more problems. Can anyone tell me how I should approach fixing this?

Nobody else has offered any help yet, so here are my suggestions.I am working on a 39 car, and I understand that the same bullets are used on your burb.I finally got 2 good ones, but have a couple like you describe.For the broke off studs, I figured I could cut it off flush, drill it out, then use a small bolt and nut to hold it. Nobody would know the difference.For the tab, you have one for a pattern.Bend up a little piece to match, drill and tap, and rivet it in place.If you go to ebay and look under 39 chevrolet parts, there are reproductions listed right now as well. Hope this helps Jim.

Well with four of these things and one that was good enough to use I really only needed to fix one.

I choose to go after the broken stud instead of the missing tab. Instead of drilling I found a way to hold the shell and drive the broken stud out. I used vice grips to hold a combination wrench solid, and set the shell over the box end of the wrench with the back side of the stud in the box. It took some solid wacks but wasn't hard.

I screwed a couple nuts (to protect the threads) on a good stud on one of the tabless shells and drove that stud out and used it to make one more good bullet. I just held it in place with one finger until the nut was tight enough to hold it in place.

So now I have two bullet lights mounted on my Suburban and two that still need repair.