REAR BUMPER

Not much to say about this other than I advise you to buy the Parallel mounting brackets that have been specially made. This is because the bumper mounting face is at a pretty odd angle and although Parallels brackets did not take me right up to the chassis at least they remove the need for trying to make something at a complicated angle. Also, at £30 a pair they are not too expensive either.

Above left: the Parallel mounting brackets. Above right: the right angle brackets I made. Not pretty but a strong and effective solution.

To go from the Parallel bumper brackets to the chassis you will still need to make something. A bit of a pain considering that if Parallel went to the trouble of making part of the bracketry you'd have thought they would make it all the way up to the chassis but unfortunately they didn't.

So, once you've got the bumper brackets mounted, offer up the bumper to the car and see whereabouts the bumper bracket and chassis bracket come to. MAKE SURE that the bumper is also correct in the left to right plane as well as up and down. I found that I had to make a right-angle bracket from box section steel. Thankfully I found a friendly welder who could weld up the pieces of box I had cut. Once they are made and attached to the chassis using the pre-tapped 10mm holes offer up the bumper again and you should see that you are now very close to bolting it all up. I still had to use various washers to pack out the small gap between the bumper and chassis brackets but thats only to be expected. You're never going to make brackets up that will be millimetre-perfect so don't go and slit your throat.

Once the bumper is on via the 2 main brackets you should find that it's pretty secure, but to finish it off you will need to secure either end of the bumper at 2 points. This is simply a case of drilling through the body and bumper together with say a 6.9mm drill, then removing the bumper, tapping the bumper holes 8mm and enlarging the body holes to say 9.5mm. Theres not a lot of material to tap, and theres no steel plates bonded internally either, so you have to be careful not to overtighten. However, they are only really there for support rather than being stressed as such, so you should be fine. I just nipped mine up and the bumper is now very solid.

Thankfully, I also found that the bumper is a pretty good fit, ie well made in terms of lining up with the wheelarch on the body in the fore and aft plane and also side to side ie it lines up well with the body line.

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