If I couldn't repair those things then I would have to make a GTO clone out of this car, which I didn't want to do. 1970 was the only year with the beautiful chrome bumper that goes all the way to the top of the grill. All the other years had grill inserts that are slightly different in size and connections as well, because of that bumper. Also, the upper grill (because of that bumper design) is different than any other year. So, I needed to know up front (no pun intended) if the front end was reparable. It was.
I found that the passenger side clearance light had been weathered and broken. I couldn't find one as easy as I could repair the old one so I took an old ohm meter connection, stripped the copper insert out of it, cut it, bent it and made a little bulb clamp. I drilled a hole in the back of the connection, ran a wire through it and soldered on the new clamp.
Then it was just a matter of pulling the wire back through the housing and seating the little clamp. Here you can see the finished product and the type of bulb that it uses.
The difficult part of the front end installation was making the fitment adjustments of the bumper supports. There are about 10 variables to work with and a place to adjust all of them. The bumper and grill on this year of Pontiac is kind of complex in the way it all has to go together and of course, I did it the hard way. As I was nearing the end I could see that original assemblers had put the entire front end together and then bolted it onto the frame instead of putting it together a piece at a time. When I pull it all off to paint, that's the way I'll do it.
Upper Grill
Bumper with Lower Grill Inserts
Mock Up Installation
The red paint is just some rattle can stuff I put on there to protect the fiberglass and composite from weathering. When I'm ready to paint, it will have to be stripped, sanded, primed, etc. But for now, it's nice to look at and imagine just how cool this year of Lemans really is.
No comments:
Post a Comment