'46 tail lights one only ?

I saw a very clean 1946 CJ2A the other day.  The jeep only had one rear tail light.  The jeep owner said that his jeep only came with one tail light.

If you did not pay extra for the passenger side tail light would the jeep come with nothing their ?  - or- would this be when jeep placed a reflector on the passenger side ?

Y'know...that raises an interesting question for me, and I'll have to go do some looking around for myself...if you DID purchase the optional passenger-side taillight, was it installed in the location otherwise occupied by the reflector? Never really thought about it, since I don't have that light on either of mine, and had never thought about it before. I don't recall that there were possibly TWO lights AND a reflector, so maybe it was applied (from the factory, that is) in the same general location? Anybody got any more accurate info on this?

I understand that the holes for the reflector would be "on a 45", Sam, whereas the taillight mounting bolts would be vertical, but was the location on the body panel essentially the same? To tell the truth, I don't know that I'd recognize an original 2-light rear end from one that was added by an owner at a later date. And if that's the case, who knows? How to identify one vs. the other in old pics now?

Put it another way...while coming down the line at the factory, were the holes for the reflector already punched, and _then_, if the order stipulated that it should have the option of another taillight, were two _more_ holes drilled, or was the panel left blank until the tub reached that stage, etc., and in either case, was the physical location of the lamp in the _same_ location as the reflector WOULD have been?

Edited by Jus*Jack - 12 May 2008 at 4:45pm

I purchased a new left rear tail light and right rear reflector for my CJ2A from Kaiser Willys.  I just opened the box to inspect what I planned to install this coming weekend.

I'll have to look closely for and dimples or knockouts and report back.

Jerry M wrote:   Am I getting to anal for an old jeep ?

Jerry: Roc's right about the "anal" part of this crowd. <g> He's one of the worst!!!! (Just kidding!) But YOU will have to decide just how anal you really want to be about this...

An "original" tail light will set you back a HEAP of cash, IF you can even find one (usually on eBay or similar sites), and a repro will usually run about $35-$40. It will come with a black housing and chrome bezel (lens retaining ring), but the typical repro lights have the mounting bolts located horizontally, whereas the originals were vertical. There are some other differences as well, although they aren't as readily discernible. There's a good explanation of a lot of those on Sean's page (sorry, don't have the URL handy, but a little searching around this site will turn it up.)

The reflectors were either done with black paint or stainless surrounds, and there's a good discussion of those on this site as well...and a thread a couple of months ago where a couple of the members actually had some repro surrounds chrome-plated to resemble the stainless, and those were sold to other members of this Page. Don't know if there are still any available, but you might check with trader_reed.

Jerry:

The metal frame of the reflector is olive brab green.  The photo's in the post above show a black frame -or- aluminum colored frame.  Should I ask for another colored reflector frame ?

Black or chrome depends on your serial number.

They were black painted up to s/n 67921, and either chrome plated, or stainless steel, after that.

You're not likely to find a "correct" one in anything but OD.  Just repaint it black if that's what you need, or strip the OD paint off if you need "chrome" look.

Am I getting to anal for an old jeep ?

Not quite anal enough yet.  To join the crowd, you'll get picky about the lens itself:

Black should have a "Corcoran Brown Plastic #100" bezel, w/ "Grotelite #100" lens
Chrome should have a "C.M.Hall" bezel, w/"Stimsonite #12" lens

There's a good discussion about it here somewhere, try a search.

Sean