So, there are two ways to convert my 79 to chrome bumpers, take the entire quarter panel off the rear of the 69 I have and replace the 79 quarter panels and tail with the 69 ones. I ruled that out because the 69 rear I've got is in such poor shape. I was planning on just cutting off the rearmost 18 inches or so of the 69 and grafting it to the 79 but I think I see a problem in doing that and am looking for opinions on whether not this is a problem and what to do about it.

Note the character line that goes down the side of the front fender, the middle of the door and the middle of the rear quarter panel. On the 69 the character line on the rear quarter panel is in line (parallel) with the character line on the door and front fender. On the 79 the character line on the rear quarter panel starts even with the character line on the door but rises towards the back of the rear quarter panel (not parallel).







Now note the pictures on this fellows grafting of a 69 rear on his 82. There appears to be a significant alignment problem with the character line on the rear quarter graft initially but after the merge line has been glassed in it seems to disappear! Are my eyes playing tricks on me? If there really is this big mismatch in the quarter panel character line between the 69 and the 79 can I just merge the two with filler, or what? Before you suggest I contact the person who did this project, I've already tried and he doesn't respond to my messages.

 

Priya - I've followed along in the handful of threads discussing your wanting of the chrome bumper conversion. In my opinion, your making it very difficult and lengthy. I think the simplest easy solution is to just buy the Custom Image Corvette conversion bumper made fore the 78-82 rear quarters and be done with it! (I did )

Good luck with whatever you decide.

 

I looked at that, but the tailight panel they sell is not a stock shape. It is what they call a "modified ducktail" and I don't particularly care for it.

 

Understandable.

 

yeah...pretty much ruined the look making it "theirs"
what priya is building is all "hers" not someone else dream....

 

I am trying to follow along the question about the character lines. In the photos that show the 69 grafted onto the 82, it looks like they built in an angle to compensate for the lines. There is a large gap between the two sections that is then glassed over. If they mated these together I do not think the lines would match up.

kdf

 

I keep hearing "modified duck tail" and wonder if you are talking about the bolt on rear bumper. That is indeed different shape than a stock chrome bumper car.
An un named person and I made the rear bumper on my car at an un named shop.
As I recall we used a stock spoiler but had to split it and made it an inch wider. We used stock lower panels, and a tail light center panel from a modified car that had the corvette script in it, which I later cut out to put in the light up script in the back.
When we were done we easily pulled a mold off of it, which is what is used to make the graft on bumper.
When we built that rear end it was because I wanted a 73, but owned a 76, not because we wanted to "make it ours". I think we pulled it off and have never had anyone at a car show ask what I did to the back end. I have, however, had a lot of people read the registration card saying its a 76 and ask "are you sure its a 76?" or say "isn't this a 73?"
I just wanted to make sure we are all talking about the same thing here.







This shot is taken in front of the shop where we started building my car.







It is plenty strong. :-)

 

It looks like a pretty bad mismatch in the following picture but looks okay in the one after that. I think the owner realigned the 69 portion after the first picture as if you note the lower edge of the panels in the first picture the 69 lower edge is lower than the 82 lower edge. In the picture where they're bonded together the 82 lower edge is lower than the 69 lower edge.





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I first heard the term "modified duck tail" on the CIC site when I was looking at their graft on chrome bumper conversion tail section. That's how they described it. Its a little taller and extends farther back than the factory 68-73 rear and the outer corners are less rounded.

 

your conversion is not for the faint of heart but its doable. the tails of the chrome cars and tails of the rubber cars look the same at a quick glance but they are different almost everywhere, mostly at the bottom where the rubber cars tuck inboard.....that's going to be the part that will make you scratch your head. the style lines can be filled and blended and modified to look pretty good. it just a matter of a lot of filler and sandpaper until it looks like you want it to , same way in the spoiler area , there is some difference there too in the contours and shape of the deck area , but that is pretty straight forward too , filler and sandpaper. the only advice i can give you is ...you will need at least the top half of the 69 tail to get the spoiler and tail light panel right , from the style lines down its going to be pretty much hand made to get it looking right , you will find on the 69 tail a good bit of the lower area is way too wide and will more than likely need to be cut down to make it look right. don't throw in the towel just yet , regroup , rethink and come up with a plan....when you see the end result all the gray hairs will be worth it

 

Priya, the pictures in your initial post show where the same shop that Ibanez mentioned, made their very first chrome conversion, on their personal 82 CE.
This was a proto, using a 69 stocker, to get the rear close to the original.
Later different types of bumpers evolved from that, so there is the choice between the modified duck tail that you and Bats refer to, as well as a stock looking version.

In another thread here recently was written by someone they do not sell them anymore, what`s not true.
One of the bumpers available has a different look than stock, including an arch at the lower panels and different tail, but as said another one is there that i believe was just designed to finally achieve what i understood is your idea.
On Brent`s ride, if i imagine it with chrome bumperettes on it, i could never see that was no 73 before.
But maybe it`s just me and i overlook anything, i am curious if others find something that really gives a hint it`s no stock bumper .








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Priya.....I didn't realize the differences between the '76 and '79 rear body sections. I guess I "dodge a bullet" when the previous owner of my '68 convertible grafted a '76 rear section onto the body. It was just a matter of getting the dimensions in the sample-pic below as close as possible since the deck area was basically "flat" and the fender contours were similar on the '68 and '76 sections......







I used the above angles as a reference only to mock-up the section that I was grafting onto the '68 body.

 

Doorgunner, I was curious specifically about your experience. I believe the horizontal character line on the 76 rear quarter is the same as the horizontal character line on the 79 as the bumper covers are the same. That's why I was wondering if my impressions of the pictures I posted are accurate and I wasn't just imagining a mis-match in the character lines between the 79 and 69. If your 69 tailight panel lined up with your 76 rear body perhaps the 69 rear will match up to my 79 body.

I'll be making good use of the measurements you took when it comes time to graft on the 70-73 tail on my 79 - thanks!

 

I just took a close-up pic of the graft I am making.....the character line on a rubber bumper car DOES seem to rise above my chrome bumper graft. As you noticed in your pics, a chrome bumper car character line seems to be parallel with the top of the chrome bumper.







Another member advised me that when necessary......I should add enough layers of fiberglass to the INSIDE of the panel-area in question so that the OUTSIDE of the panel-area can be ground-down/sanded into the desired shape (I hope that makes sense)

 

I just took this pic holding the chrome bumper against the grafted section...................





I added a strip of white tape directly onto the character line.....you can see how the line "disappears" at the grafted area......this makes me think that modifying the character line to resemble a '68-'73 character line might not be difficult.

NOTE: The dark paint may cause the "line" to be less noticeable?

 

Thanks so much for checking that doorgunner. I checked and 74-82 rear quarters are the same.

I've accepted that its going to be more custom work than I wanted to graft the 70-73 rear on my 79. Last night I paid another CF member for the rearmost 18 inches or so off a new 70-73 ACI rear clip he has. Between that and the 69 rear clip I previously bought I'll have about $2100 into chrome bumper rear fiberglass. I discussed with my husband and he encouraged me to go ahead with the project and now that I've accepted the reality of the situation I'm feeling a bit better about discovering this problem and am confident that I can eventually gt it sorted out (I've done fiberglass work on several occaisions before).

Only thing I'm wondering about is doing the buildup on the backside of the fiberglass like you suggested. Just behind the rear wheel the quarter bonds to a flange and I don't see any easy way to build up the glass behind the flange without removing the quarter from the rear. Perhaps I can sand down the character line through the fiberglass and into the flange and then build up the thickness from the front side.

 

Just to make sure we are talking about the same thing I took a pic looking rearward on the driver's side rear wheel well and also a pic off the internet of a quarter panel splash shield. Is the piece in the pics below the flange you are referring to........












OR.......is this the flange you are referring to..............




(the P.O. of my car completely eliminated the flange shown in your sample pic)



I also allowed for extra length on the "tail light section" that I removed from a donor car, and also cut the "tail light section" off my '76 body several inches rearward to allow for mistakes (I hope that made sense/I have a Table of Contents on page 1 of my thread so I can find pics easier/ https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...post1590630203


I'm with your husband.....you can do it.....(just remember that I cut my fenders unequally to make my donor section work for me......you shouldn't have to do what I did-----your donor section should be symmetrical)

 

I'm pretty sure that first picture is of what I'm thinking of. The second picture is not the flange I was referring to. Found this picture on your thread that is for sure the flange/splash shield I'm thinking of:



This is what I was thinking would be in the way for building up the inside of the quarter panel with fiberglass to allow reshaping the horizontal character line in the middle of the quarter. I don't know if that can be easily removed to allow thickening the inside of the quarter or if one might sand through the outside of the quarter on the character line and into that flange/splash shield enough to allow one to build up the quarter panel enough to reshape the character line.

 

just another unsolicited opinion here......the area around the fender ( inner splash shield ) you are concerned about being too thin and possibly sanding through should be forward of where the serious sanding and sculpting will be. it could very well be you may have to add a little material (on the outside) in that area to blend everything. the 69 tail is wider at the bottom than the 79 so you may not have any problems in that area at all....or the other option is i am dead wrong.....its rare , but it does happen

 

Nice 78!