Some of the tasks that I thought would be easy bolt-on tasks turned out to be much more involved than I thought. The bumpers being one of them. I found that all the t bolts holding the rubber to the chrome bumper were all rusted and they would almost fall off at the sight of my spanner, of course it's really hard to find these special T-bolts where I am so I decided to make them by welding threaded rod to a cut off end of a electrical half saddle which is used for holding 20mm conduit. It was just the right size so it saved me some cutting and also had the hole drilled as a bonus. Only issue was that they were zinc-plated so I put them in a tub of muriatic acid for a few hours before starting to tig weld them. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the process as happens often when I get lost in a task but I managed to make 30 of the little things, just enough for doing the front and back bumper bars.

The bonnet adjustment was also hours of fun! Luckily I have a spares car which I can refer to when I don't know how things go back together but I still managed to put the spring in the wrong way the first time so it actually made opening the bonnet more difficult! The trick was to mount the spring to the bonnet with the legs pointing down, when the bonnet is closed the spring needs to be under tension.

The bonnet adjustments are better done with the spring supports loose as the they seem to add another variable to the already complicated mix. I had to fiddle around with it a fair bit but I think it might be best to first adjust the height of the bonnet at the front with bonnet closed, by moving the brackets at the front of the car up or down. Once the height looks even from side to side, tighten the brackets and move on the adjusting the side of the brackets which bolt to the bonnet. For this I measured the clearance of the corners of the bonnet to the base of the windscreen pillars, I adjusted the brackets until the clearance on both sides was about the same about 10mm. The final step would be to tighten the spring supports so the clearances are still good when the bonnet is locked.

Here is a shot with the bonnet on and the bumper waiting to get on. Notice that I have the bumper bar supports the wrong way, it looked really funny when I went to put the bumper bar on and found that it was pointing down! The bumper bar was a pain to put on, there is probably a method to it which I don't know but I made a mental note to myself to leave the easy to reach bolts loose to the end, tightening the hard to reach bolts last means there is little play which makes the whole task more difficult.

Here is the front bumper finally mounted.

The hardest part with the back bumper was replacing all the rusted t-bolts in the black rubber moulding and then surprisingly the number plate light just didn't want to be woken up from their rusty slumber!

Next up will be to put some of the body chrome back on and then make a start on the doors.