Removing bumpers and the black plastic trim pieces

[Larry]

I need to remove the bumpers from my '79 X1/9 - both front and rear - along with the trim pieces that sit between the body and the bumper.

What's the magical way to do this? I can see someone tried to do this before (possibly they were successful) as the 2 outer bolt tabs are torn away from that trim piece. I'd rather not tear the rest of them....

 

[JKIDD]

In my experience, its almost certain these will spin in the holding tabs. I used small vice grips to hold the square head do I could undo the nuts.

 

[Dan Sarandrea (Phila)]

Elephant ears: held in by three 10mm nuts on studs, look for very large diameter washers (aka "fender washers")

Black plastic filler trim between body and bumper bars: Approx 7 front/5 rear square headed bolts semi-embedded in the right angle of the part of the black that contacts the body---IIRC 8mm or 7mm nuts. As JKIDD notes, pliers or vice grips might be needed if they are rusted or otherwise uncoooperative.

Rear bumper: support each end or the middle with something. Look for IIRC two 13mm hex head bolts, washers & nuts securing the bumper shock absorber mounting plate to the intermediate bumper mounting bracket. Loosen and remove the nuts and bolts which should release the bumper from the shocks. If you need to remove the shocks, there are two pretty big bolts that hold it in, these are accessible from the runk pockets.

Front bumper: Same as rear. If you have to remove the shocks, then to access the big bolts up front most people say you need to remove the lower rad support to get wiggle room to get wrenches on the bolt heads and space to run them out.

 

[Dr.Jeff]

The hardware tends to rust and become frozen. The plastic pieces that they are anchored into is not all that strong. So attempts to remove the hardware usually causes damage to the plastic rather than separating the nut and bolt (as described by @JKIDD above). I tried every trick I know but a number of them got destroyed anyway. So at some point I decided to give up on trying to save them and just ripped all of the rest out. Some of the hardware is very difficult to access, which only makes the rusted fasteners harder to deal with.

 

[Larry]

Thanks @JKIDD, @Dan Sarandrea (Phila) and @Dr.Jeff for the input.

@Dr.Jeff - after you gave up trying to save them, what did you put back in their places? The current plan is to put the bumpers back on the car and of course, I'd like to fill / cover that gap. Down the road some number of miles, I might be able to remove them

 

[Dr.Jeff]

Thanks @JKIDD, @Dan Sarandrea (Phila) and @Dr.Jeff for the input.

@Dr.Jeff - after you gave up trying to save them, what did you put back in their places? The current plan is to put the bumpers back on the car and of course, I'd like to fill / cover that gap. Down the road some number of miles, I might be able to remove them

No, I never intended to reinstall the bumpers. The car has been undergoing extensive customization, including reworking the nose and tail panels for a "bumperless" look. That's why it was a easy decision to not try saving the plastic pieces from damage and just rip out their fasteners.

The "nuts" inside the plastic are like wood thread-inserts....

And they rust onto bolt. So when you turn the bolt, the whole insert comes out from the plastic. Unfortunately they were molded into the plastic. So it is still quite difficult to get them to move and they tend to take chunks of the plastic with them.

In some cases the bolt snapped off before anything came out. That actually made it easier. I even thought about cutting off all the bolts but most of them are not accessible enough to do so without damaging the bodywork.

If you are lucky two things may happen. First you might get some of the bolts to come off normally (a couple of mine did). And second you might manage to get the whole insert out without too much damage to the plastic (some of mine were like that). Then you should be able to glue a new insert into the plastic.

I should note this X was a relatively rust-free SoCal car. Not a real rust bucket where every fastener on the car is frozen. These particular fasteners seem to be more prone to corroding than most. Perhaps the threaded inserts are a different metal than the bolts, so dissimilar metal reactions happened?

 

[DanielForest]

Agree with the others.

The bumper itself is the easy one to remove. The bumper filler (part no 4403572) is the worst. Lot of quality loose-nut is require and long nose wise-grip. In the end, you may save the plastic parts and use some creative thinking to put back bolts and nuts.