'63 grille & light bezels on a '62?

[RBW]

Will '63 grille and headlight bezels fit and bolt directly onto a '62?

[aerotruk63]

Yes it will bolt on with a few extra drilled holes.
Will not comment any further. lol

[RBW]

It looks like the '63 headlights are further outboard than the '62. Does the upgrade require mounting the lights further apart? Does this mean the grill support panel needs to be changed, or can the '62 support panel be easily modified for this headlight migration?

[forestb]

If you absolutely wanted to you could. But you should be able to bolt three of the 4 bolts on each side and be good to go, or you could drill an extra hole if that bothered you.

[RBW]

Originally Posted by forestb

If you absolutely wanted to you could. But you should be able to bolt three of the 4 bolts on each side and be good to go, or you could drill an extra hole if that bothered you.

Thanks. I'll give it a go with the existing grill support panel.

[reed62]

Originally Posted by RBW

Will '63 grille and headlight bezels fit and bolt directly onto a '62?

Do you need a 62 grille? I have one that I would be willing to part with.

[RBW]

I went ahead and installed a 64-66 grille from the Truck Shop in Orange, CA. Used their left and right headlight bucket panels (pn 64-008125 & 64-008126) headlight bezels (pn 64-00812) and grille (pn 64-00501). The bezels include the necessary sheet metal screws, but did not include the sheet metal screw retaining clips. Fortunately, they are basically the same as the clips used to hold the screws when you cut holes in door panels and install speakers, so I had a few in the hardware drawer (6 required for mounting the 2 headlight bezels.

After getting the 'headlights, grille and headlight bucket panels off, I bolted the new headlight bucket panels to the new grille and put it in place to check for hole alignment. Of the 3 bolt holes for each bucket panel, I found the only ones to line up were the upper left on the left side and the upper right on the right side. I temporarily bolted up the two that aligned and then marked the others for drilling into the existing grill support panel. For a more perfect job, the later grill support panel might be used, but that was further than I wanted to go with this project. Other than drilling a few holes, the OEM support panel worked fine.

Once the bucket panel holes have been drilled, the job goes fairly quickly from there. The grille/bucket panels go on as a pre-assembled unit. Another slight snag showed up at this point. The '62 headlight buckets align with the adjuster spring in a different location than the 64-66, so had to drill new holes in the headlight buckets for attaching the springs to the buckets.

The lights and bezels attachments are straight forward.

I know the purists won't approve of mixing years, but I've always been a fan of the mid-sixties grills, so am happy with the results.

[jchav62]

I'll send you my address... so you can ship the old grille over.