Well, I guess I am just an idiot. Got to the bum of the car, did the easy part first, namely taking the little trim panel off.
Here it is before....
Took out a few spot welds, cut the braces underneath, ground away the MIG welding at the edges and voila....early behind.
I thought, oh, this will be fun and easy compared to the front....here are the parts, including a new repro centre panel, used rear bumpers etc...I knew I had to "RS" the bumpers, but how hard could that be?
Well, lets just say that the world and I are not friends right now. First of all, the bumpers were not in the finest shape and so there is crappy welding and BRAZING for crying out loud....from a previous repair. No worries, just fit and make it work. I am not going to fit them in original style, but rather fabricate a bracket to use the short hood bumper mounts. Got the idea from another guy doing a similar thing....
No matter what I did though, I could not get the blessed bumpers to fit. A miserable afternoon of fiddling and then it dawned on me...the bumpers I have are from a short wheelbase car, and therefore the side portion of the bumpers are longer.
Crap, besides RS'ing them, I now have to section them as well (or buy them all ready to go). Did the price check...$1100 per side, so much for that idea.
Cut the bumpers in two...cut slots to allow the RS bend...here it is in mid progress....
All gas welding as I want to be able to hammer out any imperfections....or at least get close enough for the lead to do its thing...
A lot of fiddly gas welding, filling the slots and gaps....then cut the section down and refit. Needless to say there is not a parallel line in the whole blessed bumper, so there is a bit more hammerforming in my future....but here is the product as it stands today.
Pretty happy with my gas welding job, very little filler rod except where the gaps were over a 1/16....
Took a while to get the penetration and pooling correct, but I got enough practice today, brings back memories of my dad coaching me through welding....takes a while to get the touch back. Glad this is a high crown piece as on the RS part there was a fair amount of heat put into the part. Where it is seamed the HAZ isn't too bad, so pretty happy about that.
Thats all for now folks!
Dennis