‘47 Hudson Grille and a lesson re-learned.

I am in the process of reassembling the front end of my ‘47 pickup. I had everything apart for painting and took the opportunity to rebuff most of the stainless. The bottom picture shows the back side of the upper grille bar.  The machine screws are welded into a bar that slides into the stainless strip and keeps the correct spacing for assembly. I didn’t pay much attention to these screws and nuts when I took everything apart.  Usually I use new hardware when I reinstall parts like this.

When I had the stainless strip in position and tried to install new 10-32 nuts on those machine screws, they didn’t fit.

uh-oh. What’s going on here?  Time to get out the thread pitch gauge.  It turns out that those machine screws are size 12, and not only that, they are 12-28.  I haven’t run across anything size 12 in years, and it is not something found in your local hardware store (unless the store has been around forever and still has old stock on the shelf). I didn’t remember offhand what I had done with those 12-28 nuts  I had taken off, and hoped I had not tossed them out.  I found the baggie that had all the other trim fasteners from the grille in it, and there they were.

The lesson re-learned is simple. Bag it , tag it, and never throw any of this old stuff away.  It might turn out to be something difficult to replace even though it looks like something very common.

Tom