Rear bumper bellow

[sheep911uk]

Hello

One of my rear bumper bellows sits further forward of the rear light lens rather than finishing flush with it, One side is fine but on the other it doesn't end flush with the end of the light

[Ian Comerford]

Do you have any pictures so that we can see the problem, maybe one of each side?

[sheep911uk]

[sheep911uk]

Originally Posted by Ian Comerford

Do you have any pictures so that we can see the problem, maybe one of each side?

Replied Ian

[Lyle O]

Hard to tell from your photos, but it's maybe that one is mounted upside down, or you have a front one trying to mount on the rear. Bellows should stop at the end of the turn signal light.

[porschedude996]

Originally Posted by sheep911uk

Replied Ian

How about some better photos. From that distance I see nothing out of the ordinary.

I have a similar problem with my front left Accordion/bellows. The forward end of the bellows butts up to the smile trim above the front bumper. Left is 3/4” aft, while the right is flush with the smile trim. I also see the bellows is crumpled because it. I made some measurements from center of wheel to edge of bellow, fig light to edge, and center of the two lens to the edge, from the top of the rubber trim of the humper to the body, and finally from the headlight squirter to the edge of hood. Nothing was exactly the same. All within a 1/4-3/4”. The car has not been wrecked previously, there is no deformation of the chassis. I recently rebuilt the front suspension and I am pretty sure the impact bumper struts and the same lenght. When I last had the bumper off there were spacer washers on one side. They were about .060 thick.

[EC900]

Sheep911uk; looking at photo 2….which isn’t that clear though looks like it’s beyond the taillight. Try measuring in a few places it might give clues, including how the wheel arch and the bumper are aligned. Like porschedude996 says, an impact can cause some unevenness and in best of placement it still can be off a few mm for many reasons.

The bellow is secured with 4 nuts, check if the front two studs are attached or maybe rusted and broken off. Any indication it’s loose, flopping around or can be pulled from the panel? These bellows are pretty stiff and not sure if they would stretch out that far if not bolted down.

[sheep911uk]

I don’t think the car has been crashed, certainly not on my 25+ yrs ownership, only thing worth mentioning is that the turbo look arches were added before my ownership, could that have anything to do with the bellow issue ?

[75 911s]

They could have put one of the turbo flares on too far forward on the side where the bellow is forward.

We need dead perpendicular shots of passenger and drivers side lined up with the center of your back wheels to see how the arches lay around the tires.

Measure the same spot somewhere on the wheel arch to the door gap and also to the tail light edge.

If you are lucky, the arches are on right, and something is up with the extension piece that goes under the fender and to the bellow. Is that piece protruding forward into the wheel well a bit?

Is the impact tube collapsed on that side or replaced / damaged from a previous fender bender?

It it were my car, i would remove the rear bumper completely, remove the extensions and measure the turbo flares since they were added later. You might also check to see if they are lap welded vs butt welded. You can look under the arch and see if there's a ledge where the fender was welded on.

That might be a quality indicator as to why things are mis aligned. Fret not, 99.9% of people are not going to notice and you can probably let a sleeping dog lie.

You can maybe try to move the 1/4 extension a bit to fix the bellow alignment.

[sheep911uk]

Thanks for the replies, the cars going in for a repaint so hopefully get it remedied then, I suspect one of the flares hasn’t been put on properly.