One of the only things I have never liked about the car was the big chunky bumpers. They are too bulky, and they were starting to fog up and rust. They also weighed about 50 lbs a piece, so I figured I would try and find an alternative.
An alternative I found was a swap for a set of 240z bumpers. The car was made earlier when safety was less of an issue, and the bumpers were much slimmer and streamline. Buying real ones was far too expensive (over a grand) so I decided to find some fiberglass knock-offs. After ordering a set of them from a seller in California, I set to work getting the old ones off.
This process proved to be fairly easy for the front. I just sprayed some WD-40 on the bolts, let them sit, and popped them off. The bumpers came off within an hour. The part that took forever was the bumper mounts. There were shock absorbers that held the bumpers in place which needed to come off in order to mount the new bumpers. The front shocks came off fairly easily, again with WD-40 and a wrench. The rear ones were a HUGE PAIN though. I had to drop out the gas tank of the car in order to even get close to the bolts, and even then I spent at least three hours messing with one rear shock. In the picture above you can see the gas tank dropping down (really obnoxious to do) and my friend John trying to fiddle a wrench up inside.
After I had called my friend John to come help we managed to work it out after a while and some pizzas. This so far has been the hardest part of the project, but also the most satisfying, despite the size of the accomplishment.
Here are some pictures of the bumpers after they were removed.
The rear one......
....and the front one.
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