Hi Gang…
Over the last several years, those of you who have been restoring Victress S1, S5, S4, C2, and C3 cars have asked about the types of hinges that Victress used on their cars. Ask and you shall receive 🙂
Recently, we acquired a Victress S1 in need of restoration, and this afforded us the perfect opportunity to show stock Victress hinges for the doors, hood, and trunk. As Merrill Powell, co-owner of Victress from 1953-1961 recently told me, these were designed by Doc Boyce-Smith and cast in aluminum by a company in the Los Angeles, California area – exclusively for Victress.
Let’s see what each of these look like in detail.
Victress Door Hinges:
Victress Manufacturing made a door hinge that could be used on both sides of the car. These were two piece hinges that worked nicely on both sides. You just had to flip the piece that mounted on the inner fender body so that the curvature was correct for each installation. See photos below.
Victress Hood and Trunk Hinges:
Victress cast a one piece hinge that was used in “pairs” for both the trunk and hood. Victress foreman, Bill Quirk, shared with me that they also fiberglassed in a piece of angle iron – “L-shaped” – with a hole that allowed the hinge to be connected underneath. You can see these in the photos below and above.
Summary:
So today was just a bit of information for you Victress owners out there. Perhaps we can get some of our Victress Veterans such as Merrill Powell, Bill Quirk, and Mel Keys to share a bit more what they remember. Any and all detail is excellent so let us know your thoughts 🙂
In the future, we’ll share photos of how Victress headlights were mounted in the body along with a complete Victress windshield – and one taken apart. We’ll also share similar stories on Glasspar G2 sports cars, Woodill Wildfires, and Allied/Atlas sports cars – any and all fiberglass sports car marques which used unique parts to complete their cars.
These are the parts that restorers want to look for and use as they bring their objects of restoration into the fold of restored cars across the world.
Hope you enjoyed the story, and remember gang…
The adventure continues here at Forgotten Fiberglass.
Geoff
Great pictures I like them big..
I think in order to line up the hood and trunk surfaces it would be good to weld a vertical square tube to bolt the hinge pivot mounting to.. That way it could be raised or lowered..
Looks like someone has a lot of work cut out for them..
Mel Keys
Great article, Geoff. The first door hinges arrived from the foundry about the time I arrived on the Victress scene, and Doc gave me an introductory lesson on the basics of hinging: how to avoid binding, the relative positions of the pivot and the opening, etc.
The S-1A pictured appears to be a LaDawri-built body; the door frames and jams are molded fiberglass, an improvement over the plywood frames we used.
If I recall correctly, we also used a steel rod as a common hinge pin for hood and deck hinges, rather than bolting each to an angle bracket. This kept the two hinges in alignment, rather than allowing the angle brackets to follow the curvature of the body, which would cause binding.
The door hinge is fairly close in design to the Glasspar G2 hinge.
Great pictures and a great story, its nice to get into the details of these cars! don’t forget door,trunk and hood latches if you can.