Hi,

I have been working alot with trying to get my front bumper to fit the car. But it won´t (ofcourse).

I had the car repainted which also gives you the idea of why it was taken off!

Heres what it looked like before the resto (a perfect fit).



Now on to the headache (which i have spent three weeks on trying to figure out: what is wrong with this damn front).

Top view (way out of centre)


Left side (wohoh!)



Right side (No major deal)


No, no one has touched the hood, the bumper was perfect before we took it off 4 years ago. If i apply my whole bodywight to the front, i can manage to push it a bit to make it more centered, but where talking about "pretty much forcing the **** out of the front and still wont fit". I have taken it off at least 600 times now. The reinforcement bar screw holes matches up with the holes in the front bumper so no adjmustment possible there (as far as i can figure).

Has nybody had this problem before? i am so sick and tired of this..

 

When I got my c4 it kind of looked like that but a little worse. Spent a lot of time playing with the hood adjustments till I got it to fit correctly.

 

I moved the hood to align the bumper also. It was not that far off though.

 

Greenwood-Robban
It's very hard to write a procedure for something when everything is adjustable.
And on these bumpers it's a nightmare, everything moves.

Maybe if you see the adjustments available it will help?

The bumper (egg-crate) assembly mounts to the frame with four studs.
You can adjust up and down with the mounting slots.
Top studs you can reach from under the hood, bottoms from under in the radiator opening.

The bumper assembly studs themselves can move side to side to center the bumper to the car.

Shims are used on the studs to set the gap between the hood and the bumper.
There are special shim, but you can use regular body shims or washers in a pinch.

The cross brace has some fine adjustments, and you can reach them with a 10mm box wrench with the hood open., But it's best to tape and protect the hood and bumpers from scratches.
The red arrow screws give you some overall up and down on the brace itself.
The purple arrow screws sandwich the cover between the brace and a backing plate, and you can loosen them and do local adjustments to the height of the bumper cover to the hood.
The green arrow end braces have long slots that attach to the main cross brace.
These are used to stretch the ends of the bumper cover out to match the hood.
I have found that over many years these bumper covers have shrunk and I had to actually elongate the slots (on the side braces) to get the cover to stretch enough to match the hood.

You can get it pretty good, but not perfect, with all these adjustments.
Just have to work it a little at a time.
I probably spent 8+ hours adjusting mine before paint, and more fussing with it after paint.

One other caution is that most modern paints (even with flex agent) stay flexible for a long enough time to allow reassembling the car, but they can harden up enough over time to get brittle and haze crack if you flex them to much.
Be gentle and don't work on the bumper in the cold, maybe let it sit out in the sun if your going to be tugging on it.

Any way I can help, let me know.

 

Nice pics.

 

super l 98

thank you so very very much. i have an 84 and the hood bumper alignment has been driving me crazy. i have had good hood-doors alinement a few times. then compromise that alinement to try to get hood bumper looking better by moving the hood and then doors to match. this just messes up the door lines.

have asked 2 different body shops what the trick is, also looking at a lot of c-4 pix. body shops say, not sure and don't do vetts much. then say, thats the problem fiber glass hoods...??
c-4 pics show a lot of older ones with misaligned hood to bumper. got to thinking there wasn't any way to get clean hood bumper line.
now i am sure, i can get my hood-door alinement back, and get the bumper in place.

your pix made a world of difference

 

To the OP,

yes, this can be a nightmare of the worst kind. Thousand adjustment possibilities...endless trial & error fittings...

I had the same issues, same reasons. Took it apart to paint it right.

The crash pad recievers (sliding sockets) are a big part. You have to secure them when you find the spot. You have to shim things. You have to get someone to push, while you tighten, someone else to lift...here, there.

It CAN be done, just get a box of body shims, 2 buddys to help, and pull the bumper off and study the way it hangs and how it bolts up. Came apart real easy didn't it?

Try NOT to move the hood...this just complicates things. The Hood was/is your best reference to what "normal" was or used to be. Without that to use as a guide, you add another variable to the hundred already present..

The bumper also gets warped from being off the car. Its plastic and its subject to heat and cold..bending and then being caught out of shape and staying like that. It WILL make fitting tougher because the seams will not be right..some will be lifted, others will act like they are waffled. Once bolted down it will flatten out somewhat.

Shims, a good floor jack with some wood or whatever to support and lift the frame or bumper and some friends.

DO go thru the fog lites and other hardware while its apart and make damn sure there is not anything that is cracked or loose...thats what sucks...getting the thing back in place, bolted up and then having a driving lite mount break and the lense pushes back in the bumper 2".....THAT sucks... try to avoid if at all possible !

good luck, its not a problem, its a challenge.

Nice looking paint BTW

FWIW,

I took the passenger door off once...removed the hinges, and THAT was the biggest mistake I ever made. Each hinge was 16 angles of adjustment...3d to get door seams to line up and get the door striker in line. With the help of some shims (not necessary before) I finally got the door attached again where it had good seams all way around...Took a floor jack under the door edge,. lifting while someone else tried to twist..

Lesson? never mess with the hinges..just take the door off and keep it simple !

Thought I was gonna be cool and paint the door jams nice...uh huh.

 

WOW.... i´m speechless!!

Thank you very much for that information! Even though i know we never touched these bolts, i more agree that the front bumpes has changed it´s shape over the years. This whole resto has been going on and off for 4 years now so...

I have actually never thought of these bolts. Unfortunately, i am dealing with my daily drivers brakes (i am quite tired of old cars now) so i haven´t had the chance to working on my Corvette.

SuperL98 - i have to say you did VERY well lining up your front! Well done!!

The insructions provided here makes way much more sense to me than starting to mess around with the hoods alignment.

What year is yours SuperL98? My reinforcement bar doesn´t really look the same judging from you pictures.. Also, i assume you attached the front first, then attached the reinforcement. Or am i missing something here?

 

Mine went off during a paint job,the guys at the shop made me a super price,i had a corner repaired on the hood and all car repainted (not primed) and the moldings and windshield molding painted black gloss... for 1500 bucks , The car is nice now but the bumper is no more lined up with hood...

 

I have an 88, and I just stored the bumper with everything attached so I wouldn't lose anything.

The three cross frame brackets (red arrows) are attached to the egg-crate frame with four self taping screws.
You can't reach the two screws on the back, with the bumper cover on so they stay mounted on the egg-crate in a fixed position.
You really have to pull the bumper cover up hard to get over them, and that's the best chance to crack the paint (be careful).



I found a better image of the side frames (green arrows) and the slotted holes that allow you to adjust the bumper cover width.
Most don't know that adjustment exists.



Here is what I would do before messing with the egg-crate crash bar mounts

* Protect the hood and bumper with a good layer of masking tape. Run it across your pants first to remove a little of the glue to lessen the chance of lifting the new paint on removal.

* Loosen all the 10mm screws across the bumper cover top (purple and green arrows) just enough that the cover can move. If you back them out to far they will scrape the hood when you close it. Let the cover relax they way it wants to go.

* Pull out the side braces (green arrows) to get the bumper width to match the hood and lightly tighten just the side brace bolts.

* Go back to the three mounting brackets (red arrows) and loosen those bolts and adjust the bumper cover height (up and down) to the hood as close as possible. A paint mixing stick or ruler helps to judge how level they are.

* Finally use the purple arrow screws (that clamp the bumper cover) to get the final height adjustments to match the hood.

You might have to go over this several times

Hope this helps

 

Super L98 - I LOVE YOU!!!!

I would never have figured out that these four bolts is the ones attaching the frontbar to the chassis frame. I loosened the four bolts and pushed from the right side to the left and *klonk* the whole damn thing moved 15mm to the left!

It got pretty clear to me how this happened.. The four bolts was just slightly tightened. When i have been jacking the car up, it has twisted the framebars a bit and voila, the front bracket moved out of position. Now i just need to adjust the height and clearance between hood and bumper. But that feels like a minor thing right now.

leesvet: I appreciate your help alot. I have already sanded and polished the drl lights so everything is gone through before the fron was installed again. Glad you liked the paintwork - i am pretty satisfied as well. (There should be some value for that expensive paintjob, eh?...)

Just an idea. Using the search tool, alot of threads came up with people having the same problem. Maybe we should do a sticky on this procedure?

Thanks alot for you help, Sweden loves you Super L98!! (yeah sure, ABBA loves you as well they say)

Note: Front is only hanging loose in these pics. I havent done any fine adjustments yet, nor even fastened any bolts, but just look at the difference..

From the beginning:




And after your help:

 

Glad to help

Take your time and you will do fine