Rear bumper problem solved

In my last post I mentioned that (in addition to not fitting) the kit bumpers are just wrong. So I set about “fixing” them. And by “fixing”, I mean a flash of insight and a ton of plastic surgery. The first problem was to remove the flat sections in the bumpers. I have spares, so I cut out the offending sections and replaced them with correctly shaped sections from the bottom halves of a donor pair. Like this …

And hey presto, proper looking bumpers. Then I needed to sort out the overriders. I had originally thought I would butcher the rear overriders that came with the kit. I fooled around prototyping that idea on some spare bumper parts from donor kits. Long story short that was a bad idea.

Then I wondered whether I could make the front overriders work. I measured them and it was close enough. My first try was a disaster. I tried to cut a front overrider in half and do the same to the opposite side of a rear overrider with the idea of gluing them together. After an hour or more of cutting and sanding I managed something resembling a real one, but it was obviously not going to be viable.

Each of the front overriders has a “big” opening and a “small” so I decided to sand off and fill the “small” opening. That was straightforward and got me most of the way there. But I realized I needed to make the overriders deeper to make everything fit. That took me down the path of a whole lot of cutting, gluing, and sanding to make it fit.

Here’s how that went…

These are just roughed in, not prepared for paint yet, but I’m really happy with how they turned out. They fit nicely on the car. I removed the mounting pins for the rear overriders because they were in the wrong place and I won’t need them now anyway.

For my next trick, I need to do some pre-positioning work on the door frames, hinges and door locks. I’ve been fooling with that while waiting for glue to dry today. The bad news is it’s a fair bit of work, but the good news is it’s going to work out. The “real” door hinges are almost trivial so I will be able to fill those horrible slots in the door cards and footwell kick panels.

Anyway, I reckon Colin ought to knock out proper bumpers and overriders in his copious spare time when not moving cattle around because of flooding.

J/K…I hope it’s all ok down there.

Chris.