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KTL KTL is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: Frankfort IL USA
Posts: 16,640
Quote:
Originally Posted by SPDADCT View Post
Looking back to several pages of this thread, I don't see any posts on internal bumper supports. Is this a concern when taking out the original 911 bumpers and adding on the Fiberglass Bumper Covers?
Yes there is legitimate concern by removing the original bumpers and replacing with fiberglass or polyurethane. The original bumpers have impact absorbing shocks (USA cars) or crush tubes which attach the bumpers to the chassis tub. So a light impact to the aluminum bumpers provides some energy absorption and impact protection.

The fiberglass bumpers are a do-it-yourself figure out how to attach them. Do a search on the forum and you'll see all sorts of methods people have come up with to fasten them to the car. What that means is the fiberglass basically forgoes any crash protection and therefore an impact is going to get transferred directly to the chassis wherever the point of impact is at. That said, these cars get bent pretty good in a crash, even with the original bumpers in place

Folks have made their own "nerf bars" from scratch to provide some semblance of structure behind the fiberglass. But it's still a far cry from the original design. And the original design isn't exactly super high tech, which is rather caveman- like compared to the crash protection of more modern cars. Even the 964 body is leaps and bounds ahead of the old 911 crash worthiness.
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Kevin L
'86 Carrera "Larry"
Old 11-23-2016, 12:12 PM
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