Skinny bumper mod....

[ltheriau]

Well, I've spent the past week driving my X as much as possible, as well as tinkering some. There were a few things I wanted to do before going back to Kandahar, and this bumper mod is one of them.

I removed the double bar bumper and settled for a single bar, mounted with some of the original hardware. It'll do for now, but I don't really like using aluminium nuts. Never mind that these are 32 years old. My Brother-in-law is a machinist, and I'm going to have him make some mounting hardware out of something MUCH more solid. He's also going to make me some ends to complete the look.

I'll post pics when I have these, but for now, here are a couple of what I have at the moment. For the front turn signals, I simply drilled a hole in the bracket portion of the bumper shock and mounted them there.


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Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I'm eventually going to have to spend some time polishing these up, but for now I'm just happy with the way these look.

 

[eflexter]

!!!

I made bumper ends out of fiberglass. Basically used "shorthair" fiberglass body filler. I make all kinds of things with that stuff. I first made a plug out of open cell styrofoam (like they use for mounting fake flowers, available at Hobby Lobby) then covered it with the fiberglass stuff. File to fit.

I got the idea from kit car manufacturing techniques. Strong and light.

 

[fiatmonkey]

I made bumper ends out of fiberglass. Basically used "shorthair" fiberglass body filler. I make all kinds of things with that stuff. I first made a plug out of open cell styrofoam (like they use for mounting fake flowers, available at Hobby Lobby) then covered it with the fiberglass stuff. File to fit.

I got the idea from kit car manufacturing techniques. Strong and light.

I have been playing around with different options as well using fiberglass/resin. Cool thing is you could do as many different ends as you like till you find the right one or even swap them later.

I have used the body filler with the short fiber glass "hairs" on body work but didn't think of it for this kind of thing. Interesting.