DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

A longer lever did indeed defeat the siezed allen bolt and the left rear bumper is finally off.



I was expecting the same tool to make light work of the opposing side. Sadly nothing is so simple. A tiny flat-headed bolt was used on the other side, which teh socket refused to stay on, so it took about an hour.

One of the bumpers carries one of the few spots of rust on the car:



There's a reinforcing bracket which is holed. I didn't really want to get into welding just now. The plan was to strip the bumpers of trim and get them sprayed, but I'm reluctant to replace this on the car with that rusty hole. I assume the paint cracked slightly when it was bent, leading to bare metal.

The other bumper doesn't share the rusty bracket - it's completely absent. Does anybody know whether this is normal?



I'm tempted to fabricate on and add it, but it would be extra rear-end weight so I won't.

The rear overriders have clearly been hit in the past (perhaps explaining the later SC rear reflector and centre-bumper). This will be much easier to straighten out on the bench:

A lot less patient with the trim coach bolts this time: Straight in with the grinder.

No sure how easily this ding will come out but that's for another day:

Plates arrived today from Framptons. Seem a quality product.

Sent from my SM-G988B using Tapatalk

Plates

Sent from my SM-G988B using Tapatalk

Ooo, lovely plate for a lovely car. That bumper ding should hammer out relatively easily if its just on the side. Will need a new aluminium trim though. Looks like the bent bumperette bracket will straighten out too and that reinforcement will patch up easily. You are lucky they seem otherwise solid - both my original brackets were shot. One of my replacement rear bumpers has the reinforcement, the other doesn't - not sure what year the reinforcement was added but both original bumpers on my 73 car had the reinforcements. Looks like lots of time-consuming wire brushing to look forward to on the backside, unless you have them dipped - hint. The original paint on mine was really hard to get off - the supposed 'best' paint strippers only softened 10's microns, which then it had to be scraped off with a sharp chisel, then repeat about 6 times - wish I had had them dipped to save time - hint again. Same for the rest of my car too - was really really time-consuming to remove original paint....

All the best !

There's a company near me in Tamworth who specialise in pyrolysis dipping and quoted around £2k I think it was, to dip the entire car, which I thought reasonable. But I can't face dismantling the shell right now. I'm prone to getting demoralised working alone on large jobs and I wouldn't want the job dragging on.

I'm going to get used to the car and drive it for a while, then most likely, if I can I'll find a local mechanic to give me a hand dismantling the whole thing. So the rust on the backs will stay for now.

Sent from my SM-G988B using Tapatalk

deano wrote:Ooo, lovely plate for a lovely car.

I chased the plates a couple of times due to DVLA backlog delays. They've had covid problems and industrial action. I went out of my way to be nice, to empathise with their situation and wished them a satisfactory resolution to it. Whether my plates coming back with "BOB" in was entirely a coincidence, who can say?

Sent from my SM-G988B using Tapatalk

Still have my 73 originals on the car and they were both the same with the reinforcing and needed some patching. That was in 1988!
No paint stripper readily available is any good now, but there is one that works like they used to, stings on the skin and all that non-green stuff, bubbles paint though!

Massive effort last night and this morning to get all the orange bits back on for Lichfield cars in the park. Yesterday sounds of "oh wow" came from people looking at the black 3.2.


Sent from my SM-G988B using Tapatalk

Today, sounds of "oh dear" as people looked inside the orange one.


Sent from my SM-G988B using Tapatalk

These original alloy horn grilles weigh a good few grammes more than the black plastic ones - this extra weight at the front will transform the handling.