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Sonett Bulletin Board
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Re: Bumpers
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Posted by Jim Williams (more from Jim Williams) on Wed, 31 May 2000 12:52:31 Share Post by Email
In Reply to: Bumpers, Michael [Profile/Gallery] , Wed, 31 May 2000 00:16:22
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The fateful year 1974 was the first for US bumper protection standards, so 1974 Sonetts (I've got one too) were equipped with big black ugly resilient bumpers that look like railroad ties. They're mounted on rectangular tubular extensions that position them several inches away from the body. The bumpers themselves are very similar to those on the Saab 99 of the same era, and may even be the same part for all I know.

Previous Sonett IIIs had used small, thin bumpers that attached directly to the fiberglass body and basically amounted to rub strips. Most people think these were much better looking, and some retrofitted them to 1974 Sonetts (I've read that Jack Ashcraft's Drakenparts used to offer reproductions of the thin bumpers for this purpose.)

Another reason a lot of 1974 Sonetts seem to have non-original bumpers was that these "protective" bumpers get damaged pretty easily. If you hit a flat barrier straight-on at 5 mph or less -- as called for in the US standard -- the bumpers would "self-heal" just like they were supposed to. If you got a corner impact, though -- didn't take much, just whacking the edge of the garage door on the way in -- the long rectangular-tube extensions would get pushed sideways, leaving the bumper drastically misaligned.

This seems to have been especially common on the front: the support tubes here are nearly a foot long; they're just welded at one end onto the body platform and extend forward from there, so there's nothing to support them. It doesn't take much to bend them sideways, after which the bumper will never sit right... and it's impossible for a do-it-yourselfer to straighten them with ordinary tools (guess how I know this?)

As a result, my car has no front bumper at all -- it got such a corner whack at some previous point in its life, and the previous owner simply took the bumper off and threw it away. Without the bumper, the misalignment of the tubes themselves isn't very visible, and they make good places to mount fog lights : )

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