Front Bumpers and Badge-Bar, tweaking them to fit to bonnet.

[rfs1957]

Behind the bling (and the colour brochure) that accompanied the restoration of my car in the early 1990's, before I bought it, there lay a hidden pattern of botches and throw-it-togethers that has, since I bought it 15+ years ago, accompanied my every move and tinker.

If I had a quid for every bolt that has been sawn to length without so much as a file on the end, I could have bought another car by now. Allegedly.

The bonnet - brand new in 1990 and still in almost perfect condition - is currently off for some ding-removal, painting and tweaking, and of course the front bumpers hide the predictable fudging that characterised all the PO's assembly talents.





Can anyone tell me whether the bumper and badge-bar elements are correct for the year, and compatible amongst themselves ?

They were assembled and joined by the use of short 1/4 UNF Metalastik bobbins, see the remains of one in the picture, but I can find no reference to these in the J30 listing and suspect they were just meant to be bolted together.





However, the badge-bar doesn't fit deeply-enough inside the cut-outs that are meant to receive it, and I had to insert approx 10mm-high spacers before I could bolt the parts together - i.e. the approximate depth of the rubber bushes I'd removed.



That's the first query - have I got the right parts, and how are they meant to be assembled ?

Secondly, what kind of packing or spacers is one meant to find between the bonnet and the bumper ? Mine used none, and as the rear edges of the bumpers don't follow the profile of the bonnet with any great respect, tightening up the mounting bolts had pulled the edges of the bumpers into the bonnet in places, thus deforming and denting it.



I read somewhere that the bonnet mouth is rarely perfect behind the inner chrome trims that complete the bumpers and carry the badge-bar, but I'd like to know whether I can reasonably expect to do better than what you can see in the pictures.

[Jeremy66]

I wouldn’t be too hard on the last guy that fitted the bumpers, they are a complete bastard to line up nicely and it’s best to grind them to fit the shape of the car before chrome playing them.

There should be an aluminium wedge between the bumper and fixing point nearest the gob and a round aluminium spacer at the outer fixing near the sidelight, the rubber bobbins are correct.

All of the Parts can be seen on SNG Barratts website.

[christopher storey]

The metalastik bushes look highly non-original ; that is not to say, however, that they do not in your case serve some useful purpose , because as Jeremy has said, getting the front bumpers to line up without sagging is one of the most difficult jobs on the car. The wedge shaped spacers are in my view essential, and the best ones are , when viewed in cross-section, a right angled triangle but with the hypotenuse concave in shape so that as nearly as possible it matches the curvature of the undertray /panel profile at the point where it meets the undertray

To see whether you have got it right, it is essential to view it from the same level as the bumpers . I sometimes think that people get it wrong because when viewed from normal eye level , the angles look alright, but when viewed from a lower level, as when viewing the car from a distance, the droop becomes apparent

Best of luck

[Robsan]

The aluminium spacer is BD20663
and steel bobbin is BD20893
This information was giving to be by parts dept at SNG so I should mention ?
I have not bought for my car yet, but I can see after fettling the underpan and general bonnet alignment that adding these spacers will hopefully provide the correct bumper stance...................... before I consider whether to grind and refine fit ?

[andrewh]

In the words of Leonardo Di Caprio in the film, Catch me if you Can.......Do you concur Andrew....yes I concur?

Fitting bumpers, over riders, and noses around the badge bar ranks as one of the most difficult jobs to get right. I personally inspect every E type I see in this department as a quick reference to whether it has been bodged or done well. I have fitted two of these to two brand new Jaguar supplied bonnets. Firstly, both bonnets aperture were too small by a fraction for the badge / motif bar. But you only need a fraction for the hole shooting match to not fit. Jaguar , through SNG Barratt, helpfully suggested that as I had not brought the matter up within 30 days of taking delivery, they could not help. Both of my motif bars had to be cut short on each end to allow them to fit within the bonnet mouth. The motif bars were correct the bonnet is too small and the curved aperture of the mouth is incorrect.

So , as Christopher said you need to acquire the nice sculpted wedges to hold the bumper in the right plane to the bonnet then you need to look at the motif bar and over rider. The bumper can slide left to right by quite some extent. I would suggest that you see the little hook noses as key to the whole fitment and be prepared to sacrifice a set by grinding the inner edge to allow the nose to sit in as close to the bonnet mouth as possible. If these are not adjusted then you cannot get the motif bar in. Then you will need to mount the motif bar on rubber bobbins to the back of the nose. With careful adjustments its possible to get it to line up well. I took a day and a half to get mine to a position where I was satisfied with how it all lined up. Not many professional restorers would or could justify that amount of time. Hence I have seen ill fitting bumpers, no rubber seals fitted and wonky motif bars. A lot of over riders point down to much as the bumpers have not got the correct wedges under them.

here is a link to my post when completing the first badge bar and bumper installation
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5620&hilit=motif+bar

[rfs1957]

Ha ! Yes ! A right can of worms, apparently.

Thanks to all of you for the suggestions and the links.

For once I sem to have asked the question BEFORE it became too late.

The 3.8 badge-bar was meant to be mounted with just two set-screws UFS.125/5R according to the J30 listing, and the SNGB S1 3.8 parts list confirms this - and doesn't show any Metalastik bobbins, nor for that matter any spacers.

https://www.sngbarratt.com/uk/#!/Englis ... 20ASSEMBLY

The bobbins appear to have been introduced in 1964 on the 4.2 as BD.24448, and become C24792 for SNGB, shown on their 4.2 Front Bumper diagram.

https://www.sngbarratt.com/uk/#!/Englis ... 20ASSEMBLY

Since the cut-outs in the little quarter-returns that carry the badge-bar won't let it sit correctly without spacers or bobbins, maybe I have some 4.2 bits in there - YET both these quarter-returns AND the badge-bar carry the same references BD19113 and BD17700 from 1961 to 1968, so maybe there were some discrete changes that didn't get translated into new parts references as they were rearwardly interchangeable.

Anyway, bobbins it is, wedges and spacers it is, and grinding before paint.

PS : Is the £7.25 a pop ally wedge shown here as BD20663 look like the famous curved part referred to ?

https://www.sngbarratt.com/uk/#!/Englis ... 41f7c242be

PPS : There's another link to a similar debate here viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2803

[Julian.P]

I am gradually working through the process of restoring and converting my series 1.5 bonnet to closed in headlight. I am at the point of trial fitting the bumpers what gap should I be aiming for between bumper edge and body? I also have wedge shape spacers that I assume are for the front mountings however I am unsure what should be used for the rear mountings.
Help would be very much appreciated, Julian.

[rfs1957]

OK boys, bonnet-nose tweaking and steep learning curve continue.


The badge-bar rubber bobbins supplied by SNGB as C24792 are indeed double-ended 1/4 UNF male-male, but the hex is too big to screw in past the cut-aways on the chrome trim.








Even with the hex taken down to the same size as the rubber core, the bobbins won't seat because of the welding blips.

Maybe these issues are specific to my car - has anyone got a truly original bobbin to compare please ?





And even if that seating could be achieved, they'd still be way too tall - so the badge bar sits way outside the cut-out that's destined to receive it, viz :





.... so unless I can find smaller/shorter 1/4 UNF Metalastic bushes, I think I'll go for making plastic spacers and the - perhaps original ? - method of location that just involves set-screws in from the back.


As regards the bumpers themselves, I think the "non-droopy" look has been achieved (RHS only so far)








but I now need to confront at what distance the bumpers are going to sit from the shell.





I've currently got between 8 and 15mm gap at varying places along the length of the bumper





but could probably halve this by tinkering with the spacers.





Could anyone suggest what the correct gaps should be ?





Are they really meant to be so close that the rubber trim BD.18947/2 wedges over the edge of the bumper, and kisses the bodywork like a wiper-blade ?





And which is the correct application for the rubbers anyway ...........





and how could one ever use the edge clips BD.10313 shown to retain said rubber in place ?

Au secours please.

PS - actually, from looking harder at the drawing below, it looks like neither of the above are correct .....

[johnetype]

The gap needs to match the thickness of the rubber strip you're planning to use. If you use the wide Series 2 strip your gap can be wider than a country mile which is why Jaguar introduced it to save money. If you use the aesthetically more pleasing earlier narrow rubber strip then they'll be more work needed to get the gap right.

[Jeremy]

Hi Rory
I haven't started on my front end yet so I can't help with the bobbin/badge bar business. Just crossing my fingers that it will (or rather, just posssibly might) fit together. But the back end is done and I can offer the following:
- The gap between the bumper and body needs to be wide enough to allow the trim to sit consistently level along the length, and narrow enough so that it can actually bridge it. My rear bumpers were supposed to fit perfectly as Robeys had them when they did the bodywork, but they weren't perfect. I found if I got the bumper too close to the body at any point, it squeezed the rubber up and caused an ugly bulge in the line at the top of the rubber. As I shimmed it away, then the gap elsewhere would open up so you could see daylight. In the end I got a decent compromise - I recall the gappiest bit on one side was under the light unit where you can't see it. I also had to cut away some of the rubber underneath where the bolt flange is welded to the bumper (towards the thin end) as otherwise this flange doesn't allow enough space for the bottom part of the rubber and forced the rubber up.
- As I recall, without going and looking at the car at this time of night, your first photo is the correct orientation. circular bead kissing the body above.
- Trying to use those clips at the extreme end of the rubber was a waste of time for me. I used a bit of superglue and cut a lot of V-bites out of the underside of the rubber to get it to go round the very sharp u-bend at the bumper tips. In the end it sat OK when the bumper pinned it in place, but having 3 or 4 hands would have been darned useful.
- It did take a hell of a long time with endless bolting and unbolting and inserting and removing washers. The rears are heavy too so it became exhausting as well. Add the constant anxiety of scraping my new paintwork....ugggh. (I put a few layers of tape there but in the end you have to peel it off and bring that frightening, sharp-edged elephant tusk oh so close to the virgin bodywork, it's really scary...)

Dunno if any of this helps but I hope so...

[rfs1957]

Thanks for that Jeremy, most helpful.

I'm presuming that the SNGB-supplied BD.18947/1/2 is actually just BD.18947 that was originally supplied in different lengths and called /1 and /2 in the J30 parts book according to whether it was for a front bumper or a rear bumper respectively.

The sections illustrated in the exploded-parts picture I showed above are confusing as there are no clear sausage-rolled edges on the rubber, but the depth of the slot has got to be the giveaway, see below.



I still can't see for the life of me how you could ever have used the BD.10313 spring-steel clips to hold this trim in place, as these are the same clips used to hold the outer door window-wiper seals in place ; they appear to afford no opportunity to clamp a rubber edge against a bumper steel edge in this current context, and still less remain invisible.

Glue it may indeed have to be, but can anyone throw any light on this use of clips ?

[Robsan]

I think you need........BD 20893
https://www.sngbarratt.com/uk/#!/Englis ... b92fe8e7d9

[Geoff Green]

Thanks for the in depth discussion of a procedure I will have to do in the future. I am thinking about the change in angle of the bumper blade as it is adjusted to be closer to the body in the horizontal plane referenced to the midline through the center of the car. Not a problem on the rear. The front blade adjustment will cause the angle of the connection between the blade and center bar to change. Perhaps that is why a flexible connection is needed. The oval slot allows side to side width adjustment but the angle will alter similar to the joint in your finger.

I'll go back to drinking coffee and review the thread again as I wake up.

Geoff

[Moeregaard]

When I restored my early 4.2 FHC, getting the bumpers right became such a pain that I machined a batch of bushings of various thicknesses from alloy bushing stock, and spent a lot of time just experimenting until everything came together. In the long run, I think I saved myself a lot of frustration.

[rfs1957]

David, Any chance we merge this post with

Front Bumpers and Badge-Bar, tweaking them to fit to bonnet.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=12039&p=97781#p97781

as it's going to be wholly overlapping ?

Done!

[rfs1957]

Geoff,

Don't worry, nothing about this ensemble is rigid enough for the slight changes in assembly angles brought on by adjustments in the oval-holes to make any difference ; the inclination and orientation of the vertical over-rider chromes has way more effect on the badge-bar fixings than any movement of the side chromes.

The one thing that I am pleased about is that, for once, I'm doing this in the right order.

ie - fettling the shapes, spacers, fixings alignments etc BEFORE anything has been painted !