| LIFE OF A GT |
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 | |  | April 11, 2008 - One of Janel's comments when viewing pictures of the cars online was about the bumper overriders.
She's not a big fan. Thankfully they're not difficult to remove. Will they stay off? Hard to say, the front does look a little better with them in place. Time for some looking and thinking.
Another future plan involves a different grille. I'm not sure if it's going to be the earlier or the later design yet.
entry 13 - tags: styling, bumpers | | |  | November 13, 2010 - I felt like making some noise today, so it was time to modify the bumper supports.
The original design had the bumper supports bolted laterally through the frame horns. Those were cut off quite some time ago, and there's a crossmember in the way. Luckily, I realized this was coming when I installed the crossmember so I welded some captive nuts inside for the bumper to bolt to. The front bolt was left as-is.
All I had to do was cut the support in half, turn the rear section 90 degrees and weld it up with a little plate for strength. Voila!
entry 447 - tags: bumper | | |  | November 13, 2010 - I also spent quite a bit of time goofing around with the Special Tuning air dam.
It's almost like I'm trying to adapt a piece designed for a different car to an MG. Almost. Anyhow, I've drilled a bunch of holes and hung it in approximately the correct location. The bumper's on quite crooked here to really finish off the appearance.
I'll paint it black at some point and when the car is finished, spend some time evaluating the look. I know it'll help at high speed, but I'm not really worried about front-end lift over 100 mph.
Sharp eyes may notice the Nova badge zip-tied to the grille in the same approximate location that MG put the V8 badge on some cars. I like it.
entry 448 - tags: body, spoiler, bumper, badge | | |  | November 28, 2010 - I've always felt that all cars should have chrome bumpers.
Not from an aesthetic standpoint, but because bumpers are there to take abuse. Painted bumpers are vulnerable and will easily take damage from a little scuff. If you do have to replace it, it has to be carefully color-matched to the car. That's just plain backwards.
A chrome bumper is strong enough to withstand little scuffs and bumps without scarring. If it does get scarred, you can sometimes polish it out - especially in the case of stainless steel bumpers like those on my Mini. Plus they're all the same color, so if you have to replace it you know it's the right color.
Bring back the chrome bumper! Or at least unpainted plastic. My new Dodge truck has chrome bumpers, and I applaud this. My old Toyota truck had chrome bumpers.
But there's an added bonus to chrome bumpers I'd never thought of before. They make excellent grounding points for welding.
entry 486 - tags: bumpers | | |  | June 18, 2011 - I've decided to let the paint dry for a couple of weeks before I sand down those runs.
And man, are there are a lot of runs. So this means I'm going to assemble the car now, even though some of this will have to come off again later.
Why? Because that means the car changes from a thing that lurks in the garage to a living car again. I can drive it and enjoy it, and take care of problems one at a time.
But before the bumpers go on that deep black paint, they need a polish. Which is a good excuse to sit on the deck in the sun.
entry 585 - tags: bumpers, body, paint | | |
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THE DIARY