1969 El Camino Bumper
ddtore
03-16-2004, 08:27 AM
Our front bumper on our 1969 396 SS El Camino needs some straigtening and my hubby rather do it himself if possible because it seems each time someone else works on it it is missing a part or 2. Does anyone out there have any advice for him on how to do it the right way!
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Donna
Send reply here or our email addy [email protected]
Donna
daveward
05-30-2004, 12:45 PM
Donna, I guess I'm like your husband, I always feel I can do it better...or at least I'll CARE since I 'own' the problem, rather than the problem is just visiting for a couple hours. Anyway, this effort depends on whether the straightening deals with alignment of the bumber vs. banging out little dents.
I've used this method successfully in the past for alignment issues: Move the offending end of the car within five feet of an unmovable object...I use the frame of my one ton pickup, but I suppose a nice healthy tree would work too. Get a winch (I'm sure this term will be misleading, so read on to see what I mean as I describe it's use). Wrap one end of its cable (like 5/16+ twisted galvanized steel line) around the tree and the other end, usually using the supplied hook, to the bumper. The concept is to use the hand lever on the winch to activate the ratcheting pulley which puts tension on the cable between the bumper and the tree.
Your husband will be wearing saftey glasses, heavy gloves and steel-toed boots. You will not want to watch. Let's assume there is a concave area on the bumper that needs to be pulled out so it comes back in alignment with the rest. Find the deepest part of the concaved area and DON"T hook the hook there. That's the point your husband will be trying to move the most, but if he attaches the hook at that point, what you'll end up with is a straight bumper with the hook's indentations clearly evident and showing through the chrome. Find a scrap flat board or metal piece (in time you'll find wood breaks too easily, so a piece of flat 1/4 steel does work best).
Now here's the art part: Your husband can't let an edge of the steel show through like the hook would so the piece of steel should have softly beveled edges and corners. Ideally it will be as large as possible and still fit behind the bumper. The important notion is to "distribute the pulling motion across the entire concaved area, but centered at the deepest point." In practice he'll find the steel will touch only the deepest part until the concave begins to flatten, and then even more as more comes in contact with the bumper. The trick is to gauge whether to stress the area in question a bit farther than flat so when the tension is released, the bumper will relax to flat. This takes some intuition and multiple pulls. Obviously it will be better to stop a pull, let the bumper relax by releasing all tension, reassessing the location of the steel piece, correcting bad movements of the steel piece, and reloading for the next pull.
Three other cautions. 1. This works well on bumpers made after yours, you know, newer steel. While working on the bumper on my '68 El Camino I had all four of it's tires chocked, the handbrake more than fully on, the transmission in Park, YET the winch ended up trying to pull the car over the chocks when the bumper decided it wasn't going to give anymore. 2. This work should be attempted only on daily driver type cars, not on classics...Once bent out of shape, these bumpers can be "straightened' quite nicely if you can live with 'not perfect'. 3. The little I've done to hammer out smaller imperfections has resulted in either learning that I can't hammer hard enough to make any progress on a '68 bumper; or, when I'm done hammering on a newer steel bumper, it's straight, but all the hammer marks have replaced the one ding...don't really know which is worse.
Good luck,
Dave
I've used this method successfully in the past for alignment issues: Move the offending end of the car within five feet of an unmovable object...I use the frame of my one ton pickup, but I suppose a nice healthy tree would work too. Get a winch (I'm sure this term will be misleading, so read on to see what I mean as I describe it's use). Wrap one end of its cable (like 5/16+ twisted galvanized steel line) around the tree and the other end, usually using the supplied hook, to the bumper. The concept is to use the hand lever on the winch to activate the ratcheting pulley which puts tension on the cable between the bumper and the tree.
Your husband will be wearing saftey glasses, heavy gloves and steel-toed boots. You will not want to watch. Let's assume there is a concave area on the bumper that needs to be pulled out so it comes back in alignment with the rest. Find the deepest part of the concaved area and DON"T hook the hook there. That's the point your husband will be trying to move the most, but if he attaches the hook at that point, what you'll end up with is a straight bumper with the hook's indentations clearly evident and showing through the chrome. Find a scrap flat board or metal piece (in time you'll find wood breaks too easily, so a piece of flat 1/4 steel does work best).
Now here's the art part: Your husband can't let an edge of the steel show through like the hook would so the piece of steel should have softly beveled edges and corners. Ideally it will be as large as possible and still fit behind the bumper. The important notion is to "distribute the pulling motion across the entire concaved area, but centered at the deepest point." In practice he'll find the steel will touch only the deepest part until the concave begins to flatten, and then even more as more comes in contact with the bumper. The trick is to gauge whether to stress the area in question a bit farther than flat so when the tension is released, the bumper will relax to flat. This takes some intuition and multiple pulls. Obviously it will be better to stop a pull, let the bumper relax by releasing all tension, reassessing the location of the steel piece, correcting bad movements of the steel piece, and reloading for the next pull.
Three other cautions. 1. This works well on bumpers made after yours, you know, newer steel. While working on the bumper on my '68 El Camino I had all four of it's tires chocked, the handbrake more than fully on, the transmission in Park, YET the winch ended up trying to pull the car over the chocks when the bumper decided it wasn't going to give anymore. 2. This work should be attempted only on daily driver type cars, not on classics...Once bent out of shape, these bumpers can be "straightened' quite nicely if you can live with 'not perfect'. 3. The little I've done to hammer out smaller imperfections has resulted in either learning that I can't hammer hard enough to make any progress on a '68 bumper; or, when I'm done hammering on a newer steel bumper, it's straight, but all the hammer marks have replaced the one ding...don't really know which is worse.
Good luck,
Dave
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