Didn’t you!?!
Well, fair enough. I did. For a while. Life has required my attention in other areas lately, leaving the blog to languish.
My apologies to subscribers and those following my ordeals. Rest assured that they have not abated, merely been pushed to the back burner while I attend to other matters.
Some time ago, I managed to back into a concrete “tree stop”, short and stubby concrete barrier to protect trees. In the fog and rain, their grey color combined with low height (under what you normally see in the rear view mirrors, but high enough to meet the bumper) and washed out reflector strip made it effectively invisible. Long story short, I hit it and pushed the bumper into the body, triggering the gas-filled shock and thankfully stopping just at the new paint job. Whew!
Due to other responsibilities, it’s been a while since then, and I had to order a replacement gass-filled bumper shock. When it arrived, I found it was too long (remember I’ve moved the bumpers closer to the body, so it’s the same as the Euro models), so had a friend put it on his metal bandsaw. Lucky for us (very lucky), when the cut was complete we realized it had *just missed* the gas charge, as the internal dimensions have changed. We were lucky. Had the saw cut into the charge itself, kaaa-BOOM! I don’t want to think about it.
Like the saying goes, the third time’s the charm.
The first time, I had a friend over to help fit the bumper, we got it in place on the car but no amount of fiddling or sweet talking would get the bolts to grip the bumper. Hmm. Irritating, but ok, we’ll just try again later.
The bumper has a metal cage, two actually, one for each bumper mounting post. The cage contains a metal slab of steel about 1/2″ thick, with a threaded hole in the middle. On top of the mounting post (with the gas charge, mounted in the car) is an aluminum spacer plate that is flat on top (to rest the bumper cage on) and radius cut on the bottom (to fit the curvature of the mounting post, which is round). All of this forms a sandwich, and since the threaded locking plate (captive in the cage) is free to move about, within limits, one can adjust the bumper position until everything lines up.
Except it doesn’t always seem to work. A second attempt last weekend resulted in more fiddling, and this time cursing, but no success.
Finally, I set the bumper up on a few old garden chairs, and experimented with the bolt and captive threaded plates, and found that they have enough wiggle room to actually tilt up at an angle and get stuck there, one would actually tip up onto it’s edge. Needless to say, the bolt will never find the threads with the plate in anything but a horizontal position. Thinking about what I could do to ensure it didn’t tip up when we were trying to fit the bumper, I considered a small metal clamp, like a paper clip or similar to hold it in position, but that wouldn’t keep it from lifting up when we put the bolt in. Then I remembered that we had some party balloons left over from a recent kid’s birthday….
With a miniature air bladder above each threaded plate to prevent it from moving too much, we gingerly lifted the bumper into place on the mounts, and adjusted it to get everything lined up, and the bolts went right in without any problems at all. Snugged everything up, installed the light bulbs for the side markers and new lenses, and went for a test drive (have to make sure the bumper doesn’t just fall off!).
Problem solved. In a quite self-gratifyingly creative manner.
(And if I do need to take a break again at some point, a not unlikely occurrence, I will try and keep it to a minimum, or at least let you all know. It’s good to be back!)
Welcome back, glad the Massa is OK again.
Want to see some videos and hear it run brother!
That day might not be too far off…