The car I'm currently working on is a '75 that came with early bumpers (don't know what year they were). I had always suspected that the PO did not install dog bones and confirmed that when I removed the front bumper to install some fog lights.

I just installed front & rear bumpers from a '71 along with dog the bones.

The rear bumper had side-to side alignment issues, but that was corrected by enlarging the mounting holes a little.

As for the front, the rubber bumper top appears to fit fine at the front of the fenders, but there's a noticeable gap at the front of the trunk lid.


What's the trick to eliminating this gap?

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If it is as snug up to the fenders as possible, there isn't much you can do. You could possibly remount the eyebrows and the hood slighly at the hinges.. ?

Close your lid ... Looks like it's open ...

Its too low

Ha! It does look open. Might not be, but looks like it in the pic.

I know when i mounted my bumper I had to lift up on it while I tightend it so it was in the right place. I actually had to do this because it always sat low like yours in the pic.

Look at the border between the hood and the lids for the headlights. That's a huge gap there!

The hood is either not closed fully or your hood seal is pushing up the hood ...

Funny, Andy

I know, it does look like the lid is open, but you can all rest reassured when it's completely closed there's still a gap.

EDIT: Yes, the trunk seal is protruding a little, it's not glued in yet.

Judging from the rear bumper issue, it's definitely possible the PO didn't get the holes for the front right-on either

I'll try readjusting it then, but may need to enlarge/elongate these holes as well


Thanks for all the replies.

Your black car with the tan interior looks great. More pictures of that interior might help us narrow down your hood gap issues.

Does your car still have the metal "lip" that the BUB hooked to? That could be interfering.

+1

On a late car you need to trim off the part that hooked the rubber bumper, otherwise it will interfere.

Andys

Great looking seats !

Being a black car and the angle of the photo it's hard to tell but the leading edge of the eyebrows don't look like they line up with the front edge of the fenders either.

One thing I had to do on my green car (also a bumper backdate) was add a washer or two to the bottom bolts throught the dogbones. The bumper tended to hang forward at the top when tightened - so the washers acted like shims and pushed the bottom of the bumper out so it would tighten more to the body at the top.

And yes on the 75-76 'lip' that needs to go away.

I've heard the lip needs to be cut off of the late cars, but not sure what the lip looks like to determine if it's been cut or not. The car had early bumpers when I got it, just didn't have the dog bones. The bumper top fit a lot closer to the lid without them.

The car was originally black, but I did notice some red paint on the front nose area and both fenders, so it appears that it's had previous metal repairs/replacement. That could possibly account for a misalignment

I'll post some close-up pix when I get to the shop tonight or tomorrow, maybe you guys can see something I'm not aware of.


There's a pic of the tan Interior in the 'what did you do to your 914 today' thread

If the lip was there you'd know what people are referring to - if memory serves it's a good 1/4" that has to be ground flush. The PO may have already done it.

I'm not sure why but like I said my '76 had a similar issue where the bumper initially hung forward at the top.

It's pretty close now; this was before I adjusted the eyebrows and headlight covers.

Click to view attachment

Mine looked like that when I first did the conversion and I ended up raising the tops of the holes to lift it higher!

Pull the bumper off and make sure the 'bub' as others have called it has been removed from the top and the sides. Not removing these will hold the early replacement bumper off by a fraction of an inch causing what you are describing.

"BUB" Big ugly bumpers.

In the early cars the trunk seal was held in by a 90 degree angle doubled over the seal area. The later cars had a piece welded onto the front panel sticking up. Is this what you guys are talking about?

Yes, that would be it.

Pulled the bumper back off . Here's what I have:

Front side view - is this the BUB lip?
Click to view attachment

Right side - fender is flush with front ledge)
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Left side - notice fender protrudes from front ledge a bit)
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Top left mounting hole - measured from the flat surface directly above the hole
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Top hole, measured from side - side-to-side fitment is OK, but I included this pic to show the flat surface I measured down from
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Hope I'm making sense. Are the mounting holes in the correct location (height wise)?
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Here's the only picture I can find of mine before I put the bumpers on and sorry - no measurements.

That's how it's supposed to be. Your right side looks mangled.

In either case, that small lip should not be the problem. It looks like the PO ground off the BUB lip ...

Yep you need to cut the center section out a bit more and bring it up a bit!

I plan on welding up my messed up holes to make it permenent!

Enlarging the holes allowed me to raise it up a little, but there is still a gap ... smaller though. I'll leave it as is for now, and take more of the BUB lip out in the near future.

There's more pressing issues we need to deal with this week, getting the carbs dialed in, lower the front end, road testing and maybe new tires ... the Rt-66 weekend is coming up fast

Thanks again for all the assistance
Click to view attachment

Still looks like your seal is preventing the hood from closing all the way.

Again, like i said earlier, look at how the hood is much higher than the headlight covers ABOVE the headlights!!!!

The hood should be flush with the headlight covers ...

This may help ya.
http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...0bones&st=0
Tom

Andy, I've mainly been dealing with the mechanical aspects of the car (drive train, brakes, etc.), adjustments to the body parts is new territory for me, but I am learning.

The headlights always made a scraping noise opening and closing, and settled too far down when they were closed. When I removed the headlight assemblies to check things out, found a PO's home made pivot that wasn't quite kosher

When installing the correct pivot, I realized there were adjustment capabilities, and at least got the front of the lights to settle in the right place. Moving the mounting pivots up a little does look like it might eliminate the gap between the rear of light covers and trunk lid - I'll play with the adjustment some more.

Also, the brows are bolted in on this car. I understand that they're supposed to be mounted with rubber grommets. Ordered the grommets from Mark.


... and thanks for the link Tom - read through it last night. Good stuff


The seats worked out great, Jim ... thanks

When I backdated my bumpers I had a similar issue. Ended up pulling the rubber bumper top off and shimming about 3/16 inch in the middle to nothing outside using different thickness washers.

It looks like you need to trim off, if you havent yet, the lip just below the front channel for the hood seal.
Also you need to mount the brows with the rubber buttons and you will need to adjust the headlight pivots at the allen head bolts. It is surprising how much adjustment you can get by doing it there.
Looks like you are almost there.
Good luck
Craig at CAMP

That's exactly the procedure I had to use.

You're right Craig. I looked at a '74 this evening and can see that the lip remnant needs to go away completely.

I'll get right on it - AFTER the RT-66 ...