When we purchased a '76 Camaro as a magazine project car back in 2004, we knew we'd have to deal with the front bumper eventually. From a visual standpoint, it's the proverbial elephant standing in the living room. You just can't ignore that elephant, and you just can't ignore that butt-ugly bumper that was tacked like an afterthought to every Camaro built from 1974 to 1977. On the plus side, if you can successfully deal with the bumpers-primarily the front bumper-there's plenty of beauty that shines through on the rest of the car. It's been said that the second-generation Camaro shape is one of the purest automotive forms ever designed. The classic long hood, flowing body lines, and an aggressive stance make for a timeless hot rod, provided you can remove the ugly from the bumpers. All these traits shine through on the '70 - '73 cars, and even on the '78 - '81 models with minor tweaks. But it is the '74 - '77 version that remains unappreciated-until now.
When we were first approached by Alan Johnson of Johnson's Hot Rod Shop in Gadsden, Alabama (www.johnsonshotrodshop.com; 256-492-5989), he told us he had a vision for what our Camaro-Project g/28-could look like. Coming from the 2006 Street Machine Of The Year builder, that meant something. Johnson agreed to execute his vision of Project g/28 based on a Kris Horton rendering that we had published earlier. The only difference? The bumper treatment. The biggest area for improvement, as Alan saw it, was to change the bumper to body color, and reduce the visual bulk as much as possible.
Alan Johnson: "We were trying to get rid of the ugly. That's the only bad thing about that generation of Camaros is the bumpers. There's very little other chrome trim on the car to go along with the bumpers, so it really stands out. With them being matte aluminum, they just stick out literally and visually. The first thing I wanted to do was see how we could make them look better. The biggest challenge was being able to fasten the bumpers on the car where it was still structurally strong."
The '74 - '77 bumper is constructed of extruded aluminum, but this lightweight material is counteracted by a solid steel reinforcement. Remove the reinforcement, and most of the collision protection goes away. This was a non-starter for us, but may be feasible for those building a racecar with alternative intrusion protection, such as a rollcage. Several large bolts attach the bumper to the reinforcing backbone. These bolts are hidden by the thick rubber rub strip on both front and rear bumpers. Alan's goal was to remove the rub strip, shave the rub strip channel (more like two retaining beads), pull the bumper into the car for streamlining, narrow it, and shorten the wrap-arounds.
Alan Johnson: "In this picture,...
Alan Johnson: "In this picture, you can see the two carriage bolts that hold the bumper to the impact absorber, which looks like a shock absorber. We eliminated these carriage bolts by making the bracket in next photo."
Alan Johnson: "That new bolt...
Alan Johnson: "That new bolt attaches the bracket to the top and bottom of the bumper instead of at the front. This allowed us to smooth the bumper and eliminate the bolts on the front. A word of caution: if you start welding or cutting with a torch on this impact absorber, it's filled with oil and it's under pressure, just like a shock absorber. Stuff's gonna go everywhere. This shows the new bracket that we made to bolt the bumper up. This picture shows a regular hex cap bolt. After we got everything fitted up, we counter-drilled the bumper and used countersunk bolts. That completely relocated the fasteners on the bumper to hide them. The bracket that holds the front bumper has a good deal of adjustment range from the factory, and all we did was max it out to pull the bumper into the body as much as possible."
Alan Johnson: "The back was...
Alan Johnson: "The back was pretty easy. All we had to do was countersink the eight holes in the bottom of the rear bumper (shown in the foreground). We took out the factory shims that go between the bumper and the bracket to pull the bumper into the body visually.
Alan Johnson: "Those holes...
Alan Johnson: "Those holes you see in the body under the valence were slotted to raise the bumper up about three-quarters of an inch. We did the same thing on the front too."
Alan Johnson: "Here you can...
Alan Johnson: "Here you can see how much we narrowed the front bumper, and how much we cut away front the end that wraps around. It's about an inch and a quarter on the width, and about an inch and three-quarters on the wrap-around. That's for each side. Once I was happy with that, I TIG welded it all together."
Alan Johnson: "Then I welded...
Alan Johnson: "Then I welded closed all the bolt holes. There was also a channel that the rub strip sat in, which we ground down. The bead that holds the rubber strip is about an eighth-inch high, and needs to be ground flat."
Alan Johnson: "The entire...
Alan Johnson: "The entire bumper is covered with a clear anodized coating. Before you weld on the bumper or paint it, you need to remove this coating. You can use an oven cleaner, or like we did, an air-conditioning coil cleaner for commercial air conditioning units."
This side view of the front...
This side view of the front bumper gives a sense of how much the bumper was pulled into the body, and how much the wrap-around was trimmed. Trimming the wrap-around is a necessity once you pull the bumper into the body, since the wrap-around sits into a recess.
Here's a close-up of the finished...
Here's a close-up of the finished product-the corner of the front bumper.
Due to the limitations of...
Due to the limitations of the underlying steel reinforcement, no reshaping of the rear bumper was attempted. The bumper was shaved, smoother, lifted, and sucked into the boby within the range of factory adjustment (after all the spacer shims were removed between the inner bumper and the reinforcement).
These before and after shots...
These before and after shots will give you an idea of what drastic an improvement was provided by Alan Johnson's front bumper mods.
These images show a similar...
These images show a similar improvement for the rear treatment.