Went in search of a FHC front bumper yesterday.
Those who follow this blog might be slightly puzzled here! And that’s because I
had prepared both a front and a rear bumper for the car a few years ago. But I
didn’t pay enough attention here and put too much trust in the experts on the
social media 😜 So when I found out that my only spare FHC front bumper needed a fair amount of welding, I hoped that using a DHC bumper bar on the ’76 FHC indeed was an easy
solution. Well, I have to admit it can be done but you either have to drill new
holes in the bumper mounting plates of the car’s body, or you have to cut open the
steel armature to change the mounting plate inside the bumper bar. The
difference between the two mounting points should be clear from these two
pictures:
DHC bumper
FHC bumper
As I didn’t fancy drilling holes in the body, nor
cutting up the nicely coated bumper bar to change the mounting plates, I went
for an easier option. I visited a friend yesterday, who also has a reasonable
stock of TR7 spares. And he did have a few FHC bumper bars to choose from.
Turned out one of these also was a DHC bar, despite coming from a FHC. But
inspecting that car’s shell, showed they indeed had drilled extra holes to fit
the bumper to the car. Luckily the other bumper was a proper FHC bumper. And
after removing the side lamps and bumper covers it turned out to be in pretty
good condition. No welding needed, just light blasting and coating!
So this will be dropped off for shot blasting hopefully
soon. And the DHC bumper I prepared? Well that will be put in storage for when
I want (or have) to fit a euro style bumper to my DHC.
And I also found a more or less intact exhaust to gearbox bracket. Though
this one also needs a bit of reshaping and some remedial welding to strengthen
it, before it can be coated.
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