Project "Big Country" - Front Bumper Fab

[SC74]

Robert,
Going back to the first page of this thread. What problems did you encounter when narrowing the grill / fenders / hood? I just put my hands on a front clip and want to narrow it for my bronco.

carl

Carl - No real problems, just a major PITA! The grill was probably the easiest thing to do - had it done in one afternoon after some pre-planning and measuring. I did the grill first and then fit everything to it. The fenders went on easy - had to notch the driver fender to clear over the cowl and welded the fender to grill body line instead of trying to smooth that out rather than trying to leave a stock body line with an angled match.

The top of the grill / fenders took some time filling the pie shape from the angle. We trimmed some sheetmetal and bent it to match so that we could weld it in - not hard just tedious.

The hood was the worst part of it all :banghead: It probably could have been done a little quicker and easier but I paid a lot of attention to detail. I think others have used angle iron on the sides of the hood after they cut it - I cut the stock side off and re-used them. I separated the hood and hood frame (about 100 spot welds to cut out) - it could probably be done with the frame attached cratchhe:

Something that you may want to consider - I talked to Chuck about all of this when he started narrowing his front end and he has a buddy in the boating industry that works with fiberglass. Someone good with fiberglass skills could probably do the hood work easily, with a glass hood that is.

The only set-back it gave me was that I narrowed it too much to run the stock Bronco angle bracket and PB booster. I ended up selling my PB booster and going with a hydroboost set-up - mounts flat to the firewall so no issues with the narrowed fenders.

Hope this helps!