Rear Bumper Install | Roundtail Restoration

Between a shortened weekday visit and me feeling like crap on the weekend visit, I didn't get a whole lot done this last week. I did do some "housekeeping" though, all in preparation for final body work.

In addition to the housekeeping (more on that below), I paid some attention to the rear sail plate (not great) and other stuff. Nothing that exciting...more body work. Like I mention in the video, between me and Elin Yakov, I'm sure you are all sick of watching us sand. You can refer to the video for that more mundane stuff.

As for the housekeeping, I'm referring to some odds and ends that I had yet to address. Namely, I wanted to verify that the holes that I cut into the new rear valance when I put it on were proper for the rear signal lights and I also needed to cut a hole in the driver's rear wing for the rear bumper mounting point.

The rear flashers are attached with three screws the run through the light assembly and into "j" nuts that are clipped to the rear valance.

Rough cut of the holes for one flasher done many moons ago.

Top and bottom center holes are for the lens. The other three are for attachment.

Of course, neither was perfect, but this was easily remedied using my 3-inch cutoff wheel.

That done, it was on to the rear bumper. The rear bumpers wrap around the side of the wing and have an attachment point through the wing and into the boot. When I replaced the driver's side lower wing, I lost that hole and it needed to be recreated. First up was to attach the rear bumper at the two points coming through the rear valance.

Give or take how it will look once attached.

Same thing, side view.

Since I still had the hole on the other side, I used a piece of cardboard and made a template, then transferred it over (flipping and rotating the cardboard since I switched sides). I double-checked that everything seemed to line up, then took the bumper off, leaving the template.

The cardboard template is taped behind the bumper.

I used a punch to get the drilling started, and used two small drill bits and my step drill bit to drill out the hole. I drilled out to a 5/8", but it should have more likely been a 9/16". Ooops.

And done.

This was pretty easy with the vast majority of the time to get the bumper itself mounted up. I do have an issue right now with the bumper touching the finishing piece (that I replaced) with it mounted up. I didn't play with it too long, so hopefully this is just an adjustment thing. Otherwise, I'm going to have to come up with something to give me a gap there (someone on my favorite forum said they have about a 10mm gap).

While I was at it, I cleaned up the mounting brackets in preparation for epoxy and Raptor Liner as well as the offset tubes for the upper portion of the overrider connection. I used the blast cabinet to get into the tight spots that the grinder couldn't reach.

All cleaned up.

Towards the end of the visit, I went around and took care of the final areas of fiberglass filler that I hadn't sanded smooth and also did a bit more hammer and dolly work on the rear sail plate, but that didn't work out so well. Again, more of that in the video.

Otherwise, that was about it. Thanks for reading. Cheers!