Front and Rear Bumper Removal

SCrazy

SCCoA Member
For a couple of years I've been toying with removing the big steal bumpers on the front and rear and replace them with simple little tube bumpers, really just supports for the bumper covers. I think there is significant weight savings to be had.

My concern is with the front bumper. It is welded to ends of the frame rails and I'm wondering how much rigidity it is meant to add to the frame in addition to being for crash protection. With the car being 100% track I'm willing to give up the crash protection but not structure. With a full cage now the car is much stiffer but if I remove the bumper the only thing significant connecting the frame rails in the front will be the K member, I'm wonder how much the front ends of those rails will twist.

Mustang guys do this all the time but their bumpers are just held on with a couple of bolts.
 
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I didn't go to the extreme that you're talking about but I did remove some of the metal structure on the front bumper framework.
 

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I've cut some holes in mine to lighten it a bit but I'm really talking about cutting out the whole entire thing and replacing it with a single 1-5/8" chromoly tube.
 
Dam. 1 5/8 .120 wall tube, ur not gonna save much weight! I've cut one of mine as shown in the pics above, but as a street car, I left the outer "corners" from the frame rails out. They flexed quite a bit, so I welded a couple braces down to the top of the frame horns from the top horizontal surface. I did it primarily for cooler clearance tho. I'm not sure it actually adds much structure. If I was going for all out weight loss like ur talking, I would take the entire bumper assy, including the plastic honeycomb off and bend up some very thin wall tubing to support the bumper cover. As you mentioned, I've done that on my 93 mustang drag car, with thinwall electrical conduit. Real light, real cheep, and real easy to work with.

Adam
 
Yep. Exactly what I did on my stang, just made the support out of emt. Only real difference I see with the bird is you will have to cut off the bumper structure

Adam
 
I cut mine out, front and rear. I don't think the frame will twist especially with the cage. I don't even think the bumper needs support, but thats probably not a bad idea anyway.

If the bumper is supported by the crash bar and plastic thing there should be some rub marks inside the bumper cover.

Its 100 lb loss front and rear.
 
My thought is to cut the frame rails back at or near the radiator support then create a little tube bumper.

My real question is what keeps the ends of the frame rails (and the whole front of the car for that matter) from twisting once the factory bumper is gone.....the radiator support is the only thing left and that is certainly not structural.


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Before you do all this, cut the front bumper reinforcement off a parts car and see how much it weighs. I think you'll be surprised at how much lighter it is than you would think. By the time you replace it with roll bar tubing, going through all this work will probably only save you a few pounds, and it will effectively make the car no longer a street car, but just a street legal racecar.
 
I cut mine out, front and rear. I don't think the frame will twist especially with the cage. I don't even think the bumper needs support, but thats probably not a bad idea anyway.

If the bumper is supported by the crash bar and plastic thing there should be some rub marks inside the bumper cover.

Its 100 lb loss front and rear.

100lbs....now we are talking!!!

I'm also going to integrate into these a mounting point to winch the car from so I don't have to crawl my fat azz under the car every time it comes on and off the trailer.

Here is a pic of a car with a fabricated front clip and the rails are braced back to the fire wall.....in my car that bracing would be inner fender sheet metal, maybe that is enough?

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Before you do all this, cut the front bumper reinforcement off a parts car and see how much it weighs. I think you'll be surprised at how much lighter it is than you would think. By the time you replace it with roll bar tubing, going through all this work will probably only save you a few pounds, and it will effectively make the car no longer a street car, but just a street legal racecar.

Car really is track only at this point. Anything I put back in would be VERY minimal, more to keep the bumper cover from collapsing at speed than anything else.
 
I went at it today cut out the front bumper and the front 8" or so of the frame rails and replaced it with some leftover 1-5/8" .083" wall chromoly tubing. Total weight savings was almost exactly 25lbs, you can see in my before picture that the bumper had previously been modified and lightened so I'm thinking that this mod may be about 30lbs total weight savings over stock. I could have used lighter material in the tube bumper but it only weighed 10lbs.

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I went after the rear bumper this weekend. I wound up simply removing the bumper and not making a tube bumper like I did for the front. I needed to make a couple of little brackets to support the bottom of the bumper cover but it was not a big deal. The rear steel bumper weighed 15lbs, I did not weigh the Styrofoam thing though. So all total by removing the two bumpers I dropped 40lbs....not too bad.

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