At 06:31 PM 6/19/2007 +0100, Gordon Pugh wrote:
"Can you tell from the attached pics if my front and rear bumpers are original or repro's?"

Yup, easy. The rear bumper is original style, nice rounded corners. It may be a more recent repro replacement, but at least the rear bumpers were always original shape. The front bumper is 1980's and early 90/s vintage repro style with flat face and square corners.

Rear bumper with proper rounded corners.

1980's style reproduction front bumper with flat face and sharp corners.

Front and rear bumper are supposed to be the same profile and use the same part number for overriders. The stock overriders will not fit on this repro style front bumper. When first mating the overrider will hit on the square corners and leave a gap in the middle big enough to insert one finger, and the mounting bolt is not long enough to reach the female thread in the overrider. To make them fit you have to grind out the inside corners to match the sharper profile of the repro bumper. The plastic trim edging strips cover up the bare ground edges of the overrider, but it will eventually rust where the plating was ground off. This vintage repro face bar also had poor plating and will commonly rust on the back side. If it is not rusty it may have been painted in back.

Front bumpers were re-tooled again in the mid 90's. One I bought new from Moss US in Spring 1998 is the correct shape and also has much better plating. It is not quite concours quality chrome, but it looks pretty good and at least it is not going rusty. If the obvious non-standard shape bothers you, a new front face bar is not terribly expensive, but you may need to buy new overriders at the same time if your old ones were ground to fit the square corner bumper.

This is a more modern reproduction front bumper, very close to correct profile so the standard overriders will fit properly.


On 11/21/2015, David Adams wrote:
"I bought 3/8 plain washers from the hardware store and found I had to file the holes into slots to fit the ovals in the shanks under the heads of the dome bolts, alternatively the holes could have been circular to fit the major diameter of the ovals. Perhaps that's why they are called special washers".

These are the special flat washers that fit around the oval shank of the bumper bolts between the facebar and the spring bracket (item #2 in illustration). BMC part number AHH5494, Moss Motors USA #406-170. I have it listed as 3/4-in OD and 1/8-in thick (but not sure it is correct). The washer photo above far right is from Brown & Gammons. It appears to have a 1/2-inch hole and small OD (which may or may not be as original).

"The bumper is the one I inherited. The chrome seems good but I am disappointed that the ends of the bar have burrs that were not cleaned off prior to plating. Too late to do it now. The center bulge looks flatter than the one on the scrap bumper that I have.

"There was no way I could get the fully assembled bumper on with the outer bumper supports in situ. I had to fit the grommets to the outer supports with them bolted by their three screws, then remove the screws to leave them dangling and fit the bumper up to the inner supports, start the 1/2" nuts and then thread the outer supports into place. Is this the normal procedure, please, or do you have a better way"? -- Dave

No, that's about it. The outer brackets for the front bumper have to be installed last (but before final alignment and tightening of the fasteners).