Swapping Bumpers

[Bonemaro]

I tried doing a search, but "bumpers" yielded too many results... so I'll ask.

The bumper on my 73KG are hideous. Does anyone have an suggestions of what might be more appealing / doable? I do have some fab skills.

Edit: I guess what I should ask is, will any Ghia front bumper fit with the right bracket?

[Marc]

Here's what a `72-`74 bracket looks like:


The pre`72 bracket is thinner and mounts to the body differently:


The contours of the body sheetmetal are essentially the same, so you could fit earlier facebars (or even the "euro-style" that have no overrider bars) if you made up some adapter brackets.

Here's a `70/`71 bumper, and a euro bumper with the big late turnsignals. Note that they don't have much protection...

[nyghiagirl]

There is a company that makes fiberglass euro style bumpers.... if you are looking for that kind of option... they make them for the later year models.

[Bonemaro]

Do you know the site offhand?

[helowrench]

IIRC you would have an indentation on the fenders where the bumper ends are.
Early bumper cars do not.

[Bonemaro]

Oh, those indents are going bye bye.

[Piledriver]

I tried doing a search, but "bumpers" yielded too many results... so I'll ask.

The bumper on my 73KG are hideous. Does anyone have an suggestions of what might be more appealing / doable? I do have some fab skills.

Edit: I guess what I should ask is, will any Ghia front bumper fit with the right bracket?

I'm pretty sure the late Ghia and later T3 share bumpers.
(early<>early as well?)

if yours are reasonably straight, please do not toss...

Although I'd consider swapping over to early bumpers for the same reasons.

[Bonemaro]

Here's what a `72-`74 bracket looks like:


The pre`72 bracket is thinner and mounts to the body differently:

I pulled off my bumpers and my brackets looked nothing like any of these.

[Marc]

Do your fronts look like these repops? http://www.karmannghia.com/viewDetail.a ... oduct=1339



On the subject of the taillights, have you seen the "Euro" lenses with amber signal-sections? They have a "lighter" look than the all-red USA version:
http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/564030.jpg

[Bonemaro]

This is what I have.

[Marc]

Oh, I see what they did there. I didn't realize that the front brackets were truncated on the late cars with the beam-basher tubes, I thought the whole thing was in there...obviously not, and the "1972" bracket was only used on `73/`74s not sold in the USA. Everybody selling them lists them as `72-`74, I suppose if you needed one for a USA car you would cut the superfluous bits off of it...

[Bonemaro]

I'll be cutting those ugly tubes off anyway.