I thought I Would try and mod the front bumper and valence myself to allow for the oil cooler type duct to feed my rad. This is about 1” wider of an opening than stock (21” vs. 20”) and 4” tall.

Got the the first pieces cut on my friends plasma table. Going to Bend a small diameter round rod to follow the intake lip to make a smooth transition in.

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Hoping for a result close to this.

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PM sent

Took me a while to get it figured out. Now I have done 12 bumpers and have a system with great results.. Click to view attachment


I have made laser cuts of 18 ga and then carefully cut the opening and add a 1/2" radius at the bottom . everyone seems to want that.. I do like your idea for the valance and would have done that myself but I don't have a steel valance.

This was my 1st bumper I did..

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Ben - I might have to send you a couple steel valances so you can “practice” and add it to your list of GT mods.

That.

Yes - seeing your thread about the bumper mods was the motivation to try doing a matched set of these. I'll post my progress as it happens and hopefully can contribute a bit in the process.

Pierre

here is an enlarged GT version eurotech body werks did...fiberglass

@mepstein sounds good to me..

Maybe after holidays so we don’t load up your garage. I’ll see how many I have in case your father needs one.

1970-1914 - sorry to hyjack. I was wondering how to get the flat front on the GT balance. Your solution looks great.

What would be cool is if you did steel ones with the fender flair area put in. Like the glass ones but metal. Best of both worlds.

Bob B

I may do that.. Stay tuned..

I bent some 3/8 rod to the same radius as the bumper bottom and valence top. The plan is to use these as a general shape support as well as to provide a radiused edge going into the duct.

I did a rod like this behind the bumper at the top of the cutout but I did not take a pic. The ends were cut off past the sheet metal after this pic.

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Unfortunately where the car is there is not much room in front of it to get a decent pic.


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Pretty happy with the overall result / look. Going to take both the bumper and valence back off now to finish the fab work. Probably won’t happen for a few days though with all the Xmas family stuff going on.

Valence is coming along - probably not exactly as factory but pretty hard to see under here to critique once the car is on the ground.

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Made some more progress on the valence - mostly welded up and fits well. I cut the piece of sheet metal off that went across the lower opening. With the round bar there it is not really necessary and will be easier to blend the body filler into.


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The opening will be boxed in around the opening into the trunk so that all available air flow will make into and through the rad.

Looks nice..

I need to draw up mine so I can laser cut some parts as well..

Had a little time to think about the next step with these and I decided to enlarge the bumper cut vertically about another 1.25" to help with the V8 cooling situation.

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After I cut the sheet metal back I re-tacked in the 1/2" round rods that form the lips and give it back some rigidity.

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First skim of bondo and it looks like this will work out OK which is great considering I was going to toss this bumper originally.

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Nice work, I still have to do my valance.