440 Bumper removal

If I remember rightly, there are two blocks attached inside the bumper, one on each side. These blocks simply slide into brackets that are bolted onto the car. In fact, this is quite a good design: I caught the bumper on a wall, and rather than shattering or splitting, the bumper just slid out of these brackets and ended up on the floor. Obviously it takes some force to remove it.

I think that there also a few bolts on the front/rear of the car holding the bumper in place (four?). You will need to look underneath with a torch. Finally, before removal, you will have to carefully remove the bolts (self-tappers) around the wheel arch and mudflaps. Make sure that the wheel casing and mudflaps are properly free or you'll break the plastic.

Obviously most of these things will be caked in mud and road-grime, so be prepared to hunt around and get filthy!

Hope that helps. Richard

Hi Richard, thanks for the info, I had a bit of an accident with a suicidal badger a few week ago and consequently I'm missing half my bumper. I've found a suitable replacement in the local scrap yard. The only problem is the car is sat on the floor with no wheels on. I was hoping it would be quite an easy job. Many thanks Neil

Did you see the American le Mans series on Speed last weekend? One of the cars (an open cockpit, single-seat sports car) hit a woodchuck at about 180mph (the car, not the woodchuck). It exploded the headlight section of the body work. The woodchuck... the most dainty way I can put it- it was instantly liquified. __ __ Randy & \ \/ /alerie's \__/olvos '90 245 Estate - '93 965 Estate "Shelby" & "Kate"

Neil,

If it's useful, I can check the locations of the screws on mine. I have a

1995 440Si. Unless the bader was really daft, I presume we're talking about the front. It might be that the bolts are only on the back bumper so you can just tug it off. Obviously the donor car's mudflaps are also expendable.

Will report back later.

Cheers, Richard

Neil,

As i said, there are two blocks that are attached to the car which the bumper just slides onto. These are on the sides of the car just in front of the wheel arch and are the primary support. DON'T loosen any of the screws on these blocks or you'll rip them them off the car as you pull the bumper off.

If you can, remove the screws around the front of the wheel arch casing that are attached to the edge of the bumper. If not, I suspect the wheel arch will break before the bumper does but keep an eye on these bits as you slide the bumper out. Might be handy to take a tough stanley knife with you to the scrapyard.

Unfortunately, there should be three vertical screws to hold the centre-bottom of the bumper in place. These are evenly spaced (8 inches or so apart) and are only accessible from underneath the car. Mine are missing, but they look like they should be self tappers and only seem to be used to stop the bumper flapping about. With a firm enough tug, you could probably wrench them out of place. As my car proves, it's not essential to have them so if you damage all/some of the tabs, I suspect it wouldn't matter. Alternatively, you could easily come up with another method of re-attaching the bumper here.

There are several interlocking plastic tabs around the front of the bumper that keep it in place. Even if you could get underneath the car, you're unlikely to find them all and would struggle to free them without cracking the plastic. Don't worry too much about these.

The bumper is designed to be slid off forwards, so do as much of the above as possible before pulling. It's easiest to have two people, one on each side, to make sure that it comes off straight and level. It will take some considerable force to remove it, and it won't come quickly. The main resistance will be the innocent-looking screws on the plastic wheel arch casing that I mentioned in para 2.

Good luck! Let us know how you get on.

Richard

Hi Richard, many thanks for making the effort of checking these things out for me. I'll be going to the scrap yard one night this week. I'll let you know what happens. Cheers Neil