Bumpers

I had the rear bumpers chrome plated quite a few years ago.  The front ones were in Ok condition so I didn't have them done them.

When I was putting everything together for the Whistler Tour, I unpacked the rear bumpers.  They had been left in the paper wrapping from the plating shop and just stored on a shelf.  I found that the center section had a mice nest in it and further, their urine had done in the new chrome.

Since I had to have that section re-chromed, I decided to have the front pieces done too.  Prior to the chroming, I had a couple of holes in the overriders welded up.  These looked like they were for some driving lights though the holes were pretty small.  In any case I didn't want them there.  The other thing that I was doing was moving the license plate to the proper holder.  Previously the old license plate holder had mounted through two holes in the front of the bumper.  The correct bracket mounts under the bumper.  For a story on the license plate brackets, click here.

The chroming took about twice as long as the estimate and the shop never seemed to know what was happening.  In the end, they did a beautiful job even removing a dent that they didn't think was possible.

In the push to get ready for Whistler, I just put everything together and bolted it on.  I forgot to put on the bumper escutcheons and got the rubber trim on the overriders with the wrong side out.

Since then I also got the proper rubber pieces that fit into the overriders.  The ones that came on the car were rounded rather than triangular shaped and they weren't quite long enough for the cutout in the overrider.

The new rubber pieces mount differently.  The old ones had four metal clips that you inserted into the overrider and then bent to hold them in place.  It obviously wasn't too secure as there was a hole and the remnants of a piece of safety wire used to make sure it wouldn't fall off.  The new ones have a molded in slot around all four sides.  The metal of the overrider fits into this slot.  It does make installation more difficult.

I put the first one in without any lubricant and it was quite difficult.  I used some waterbased (read personal) lubricant for the other three and they went in much nicer.

I remembered to put on the escutcheons this time and got the rubber trim that is between the overriders and bumper with the correct side showing.  Here's the final results.

When I first mounted the bumpers, I used some rubber pads between the body and fender that came with the car.  Later I changed them to new ones that were all the same type.  Several years ago, I noticed that Lowell Brown's car had specially made pads that fit into the large holes in the fenders like grommets.

I had kept my eyes peeled to get some of these and I just got lucky.  George Smith had bought a rear bumper for his coupe a number of years ago from FAF and the 330 type pads were included in the order.  He had never used them, so didn't know that they wouldn't fit his coupe.  I ended up buying them for my 330.  The nice part was that the pads I had on the 330 will work on my coupe as it just uses plain rubber pads about 2" in diameter.  So I played musical cars to get the 330 on the lift so I could swap the pads.  First I had to move out my 240Z, which required a battery charge to start it.  With that out of the way, I dropped the coupe onto the Go-Jacks rollers and took it off the lift.  Then I was able to roll it around to where the Z had been.  Once that was done, the 330 came from the other end of the shop and onto the lift.

Replacing the pads wasn't too hard except that I had to peel back the trunk carpet to access the bolts that hold the bumper ends in place.  When it was all done, one can't really tell much difference except that the new pads are slightly tapered.  Sorry, not a very good picture as the flash from the chrome makes the pad area dark.

After that was done, it was back to musical cars again, with a twist.  I took the 330 off and put it back in the far end.  Then my neighbor needed to put his Mini on the lift as he had a rattle underneath it.  That turned out to be the same as the previous 2 times, the sensor in the catalytic converter loosening up.  This time, we put in a new crushable washer and used some Loctite on the threads.  Maybe the third time will be the charm.  Then it was back to rolling the coupe back over the the lift and getting it back up in the air.  Then I was able to put the 240Z back in its place and connected the battery charger to bring it up to snuff.