Itinerant Air-Cooled

Hi all,

Everyone, including me, has complained about the poor quality and even poorer fit of the aftermarket rear side marker bulb holders that are available for bay-window buses. Well a couple of years ago, I bought a pair of these POS's to return my wife's '70 to original condition (PO had removed the bulb holders altogether and just had the lenses screwed on to act as reflectors). I became so frustrated with the crappy plastic bulb holders that I decided to make my own. Here's what I did. First I cut the metal bulb socket out of the plastic and then epoxied them into a couple of galvanized metal straps that they sell at any hardware store for framing work. The epoxy I used is called PC-11 (PC-7 is the same stuff, just black instead of white). It works really, really well for "glueing" two metals together, even better than JB Weld in my opinion. I then shaped the strap to provide the necessary offset so the bulb would sit in the right position. Then using stainless oval-head machine screws with nylock nuts, I attached the lens and the new custom bulb holders to the side of the bus. This does require you to drill one hole in your bus for one of the screws to go through, but they work really well. Here are some pics.









This might not appeal to everyone's taste, but it has worked well for me so I thought I'd share.

Looks good. Do you have a gasket or seal somewhere to keep the water out?

I ended up using the aftermarket holders and lenses. They stick out a little, but seem to work okay. I like the rubber gasket that came with them, although I had to trim it a bit so the whole assembly would fit closer to the body panel.

Tim

You know it's been awhile since I did this, but I seem to recall using the rubber gasket that came with the crappy bulb holder to seal the lens to the outside of the body.

What I did was to drill 2 holes and screwed the backing to the bus. Those so-called clip holders just would not hold the backing there. When I would hit a bump they would just fall off. Another way which is hindsight is to get longer lens screws and nut it from the inside.