I temporarily turned my attention to the bumpers this weekend. I’ve got a pair of fiberglass bumpers from Glass-Action in AZ (
http://vwinnovations.com) and I’m to the point of needing them to be mounted in order to do trimming and such for the fenders. I also needed to graft on the air dam I purchased a while back too.
I began by cutting some 2” muffler tubing in half on about 10” lengths. Then I made some flat brackets with captive nuts with which to mount the brackets to. This way I could fiberglass the metal mount brackets to the fiberglass bumpers w/o requiring any thru-bolts to show.
I tossed the stock bumpers and brackets to the side and chose a thin, light set of early beetle bumper brackets. The front brackets were used on the rear of the Square and only required elongating the mounting holes slightly to fit like a glove.
The rear beetle brackets were used in the front of the Square and required custom holes to be cut in the proper place and the excess cut off the back.
I prepped the bumper bottom and the air dam top with a 3” disc to remove the gel coat. Then I cut a slice in the center of the air dam to allow it to be splayed out a bit more on each end to fit the fiberglass bumper better. I temporarily put them together with some spring clamps to ensure they would work correctly together.
I test hung the bumper/air dam combo onto the brackets and it fit well. With my car at the current height, the bottom of the air dam is currently 5” off the floor.
This air dam also has a rubber skirt that hangs down an additional 3”. So as it is, the bottom of the air dam will reside about 2” above the floor. Since I have infinitely adjustable suspension via the 911 front and adjustable spring plates rear, I will be able to get it to about 1” for racing purposes pretty easily. Woohoo!!
Now I’m off to consult with my friend, Jim who does fiberglass/carbon fiber for a living, to see how he recommends permanently bonding the brackets and the air dam to the fiberglass bumpers. . . More to come. . .