So I had two rear bumpers… the one originally from the impala left things to be desired, it was pretty beat up with some bend braces, but savable if a guy had no other options. The other bumper was pretty nice, and it came from the silver Biscayne parts car. But still I didn’t have a decent set of un-bent braces. Turns out the yellow Biscayne out in the Harrington junk pile had a pretty cherry bumper/braces on it. The car was however scheduled to be crushed in a week, so I had to bust-ass and get out there with some ginormous wrenches and WD-40! I got it off easier than I thought… just had to jack the thing up to where I had room to work. Leverage does wonders to snap off rusty old bolts… screw the WD-40! Anyway, after quite a bit of time invested in disassembling all 3 bumpers and sorting out all the best pieces, I was able to put together one pretty darn nice bumper assembly. But to my surprise, it didn’t quite fit on the car very straight! Not really sure WHY but, I think the braces may still be tweeked a little, even though they sure don’t look it. If I have to, I’ll oval-out the mounting holes on the chassis to get the bumper to sit right. Part of me is still thinking the body is on the frame crooked, since I’m having some issues with the front end sheetmetal alignment too, but the fit problems I have with the rear bumper would suggest body/chassis alignment issues being in the opposite direction as what the front sheetmetal suggests! UGH! Maybe I should just buy a NEW car!
