>I've never come across anyone who actually wanted to convert TO
>a rubber bumper.
Well, we do have a template to follow. My EP car is a '65*
that has had the rubber part installed over the nose. It
does redirect the air better, or so I'm told, to the tune
of several hundred RPM at the braking zone for the entry
to turn 11 at Sears. Let's put it this way: the win sticker
on the side of my car got put there after the driver put
the rubber nose on it.
*Andy Banta -- yeah I know Butch said '67 but the VIN
on the chassis plate says it's a '65.
>I suspect this would be most difficult.
Well, if you were interested in converting a street B from
chrome to rubber, it probably would be. All we want to
do is stick the hollow rubber shell of the front bumper
onto the nose of a '71 MGB-GT. I'd say it's a lot less
difficult than welding in a six-point roll cage, intalling
a fuel cell, or putting on fender flares.
>I remember
>reading somewhere that the sheetmetal under that rubber bumper is
>completely different from what was there before, and about a hundred
>pounds heavier.
That's only if you care about the bumpers themselves. Yes,
the actual bumpers are several hundred pounds heavier. The
rubber shell, on the other hand, weighs very little and is
a net win in drag reduction.
In case it wasn't clear from Andy Banta's request, all we
really need is a rubber shell from the front of the bumper.
We are not interested in an actual bumper that would protect
the bodywork in the event of a 5-mph crash. This is for
the SCCA, not NASCAR. :-)
>Trying to put a rubber bumper on a car that did not
>orginialy have one, you would not have the right stuff to mount the
>bumper too.
We don't care. If necessary, we'll slap the damn thing
on with racer's tape. This isn't a concours car.
>I've never taken one apart so I could be wrong. If your
>building a race car and are willing to make your own brackets and such
>I think you could do it, but I doubt it would be worth the work involved.
The installation on my race car is very simple. There are
some bent metal brackets that fit where the bumper has screws.
>The chrome bumpers you offer in trade most likely would not
>bolt up correctly to car that orginally had a rubber bumper. If
>it was possible, I'm sure people whould have done it.
This is a fairly common swap in Britain, from rubber to chrome.
As for being possible, among different years of MGBs anything
is possible, you just have to want to do it badly enough.
>BTW, no I don't
>have a rubber bumper to trade either, my 69 MGB has chrome bumbers that
>I plan to keep, sorry.
Oh, good. If you'd actually had something to help us out, it
would have destroyed the purity of the rest of the posting. :-)
--Scott Fisher
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