I love the look of the simple, streamlined bumpers of the 240z (and used on 1/2 of the series of 260z’s) over the heavy and thick bumpers of the 280z. Just check those out!
As the mid-70′s emission standards crushed down on the carburetor’d engines of the day and gave way to fuel efficiency (see, not all change is bad), safety standards tightened it’s seat belt and created a war on unsafe aesthetics. Thus, Datsun had to change it’s more or less cosmetically thin bumper for a safe, unwieldy hunk of steel that people today still loathe. Nearly 20lbs of loathing.
If you remember back in March, my brother and I removed the bumpers and increased gas mileage.
Well they’ve been off ever since because the brackets I got from ebay..were less than satisfactory. I’ve already mentioned that correspondence with their maker, v8-240z, was non-existent. But even worse, when I finally got around to test mounting the brackets… the bolts didn’t fit in the holes.
Wait, what? Yep, the original bolts do not fit in ANY of the mangled, burred, half-ass hand-drilled holes. Awesome.
Time to break out that Dremel. The grinding stone attachment worked wonders and allowed me to clean up those unsightly edges to something relatively straight.
You can see the top slot is the one currently being widened / cleaned up. The bottom slot is actually 1/2 cleaned up by me and doesn’t really show the maker’s work in all its wavy glory, but you get the idea.
Had them done in 10 mins. Now to mount…
February 24th, 2013 at 8:41 am
[...] metal work e-tek! I worked on my 240z bumper brackets yesterday. So that means today, mounting the [...]
February 24th, 2013 at 9:39 am
I sometimes feel like I’m the only person in the world that likes the 280Z bumpers. (Especially when merging in stop-and-go traffic, where you can almost stick the bumper into the next lane before the rest of the car.)
They’re bumpers that say “I have a fast car and there’s a big chunk of steel between us. Do the math.”
OTOH, if you’re putting on 240Z bumpers, the 240Z turn signals are much prettier than the 280Z’s.
March 4th, 2013 at 11:03 am
Thanks Karl! haha that’s definitely one awesome aspect of the 280z bumper i didn’t consider! I can’t wait to get a good deal on some 240z turn signals. That’s definitely the reason why I got the lower valance with the turn signal holes :]
March 4th, 2013 at 11:00 am
[...] few posts ago, I was cleaning up whipping into shape those stainless steel Z bumper brackets in order to put a 240z bumper on a 280z. Now that they’re ready to go, it’s time to fit [...]