THE classic hot rod tail light is the '59 Caddy. End of story. For my "Factory King Cap" '53 Chevy pickup, there was no other choice for tail light. Here is how I did it.
There are a couple of companies that make Caddy installation tubes with the back plate welded in, the baloney cut, holes drilled - ready to just weld in.
http://www.bigjims.net/frenchingkits.htm
http://www.carnewz.com/go-low/golow_catalog_page_7.htm
Two problems with that - They cost $40 a pair and most importantly, I would rather do it myself! I found that the 3" outer case of a 2" glass pack muffler is the perfect diameter and is nice heavy steel. It gets even better than that; Jegs sells them for $17 each
http://www.jegs.com/cgi-bin/ncommer...amp;prmenbr=361
so I got two 2' pieces of 3" pipe, four nifty belled steel cups, 4' of great perforated 2" pipe that I can use for something I'm sure, and a pile of monofilament glass fiber that I'm sure will come in handy some day. Thus I got plenty of material to make my 4 tail light holes, plus the normal couple of ruined attempts, and a pile of treasures for 1/3 of what the four commercial cup would have cost. Life is good!
Prep the muffler tubes by cutting off the belled ends just as they begin to swedge down in size and remove al the internals. Photo 1 shows the muffler and a slice I took from another muffler on which I cut the shape of the two fender locations (top and bottom have different radii) for a pattern.
Photos 2 & 3 show how to use a tape measure to index the tubing pattern. With the fenders accurately mounted on the bed, measure up from the bottom edge of the fender and mark the bottom (or top) of each hole on both fenders. I used 9" & 13 1/4" respectively. Then measure from the bed to the location of the end of the tube with a line that is parallel to the bed. I used 6".
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