My car is a 1976 with rubber bumpers. I like the chrome bumper look a lot better. What's a person to do?

Cut off those big battering ram mounts, and take pictures.

1. Here's what we started with.

2. If you look over on the left there, where there is a shiny nut and some washers, you can see the offending piece.

And now what it looks like with the nasty little guys removed. It took a combination of grinder, sawzall, and hammer and chisel to get it to this point.

3. Left side. Those two nuts are actually attached to the part of the inside of the old bumper support. They are what the side spring bracket attached to.		4. A view from the top of the left side. That piece near the top of the picture is an inner rail inside the outer one. It was quite the surprise.
5. Another shot of that inner tail, with the outer rail included for reference.		6. Righthand side with the inner and outer rails.
7. Right side of the grille. Note the rectangular opening where the bumper mount once was.

Some pics of the car overall without the old bumper mounts, and with a real grille in it.

8. Full frontal without the mounts.		9. Now with the correct grille installed. ALl the original mounting holes were there. It wasn't changed a bit.
10. And from the top. I was using a rather decrepit grille with missing mounting tabs.		11. And from the side. Shiny, smiling, happy engine.

This not only took about 45 lbs off the front of the car, and improved looks tremendously, it also solved the cooling problem I had due to lack of airflow past the big rubber bumper.

© 2003 Brownie Davis All Rights Reserved