Chirco
is building a Baja Bug! Many of the air - cooled VW
parts and procedures used can also be used on Dune Buggies,
Sand Rails. These pages feature links to the Chirco
online parts catalog.
PART
28 -Installing
the Rear Bumper and Tail Lights.
It
is time to get the rear bumper on. A standard
firewall rear bumper will not work on this car
since we wanted our bumper to bolt directly into
the roll cage. So it's time to modify.
I
really like the look of the double
tube rear bumpers, but we had a problem getting
it to connect to the rear of the roll
cage. So we had to cut off the bars that
would have attached to the fire wall. The bottom
off the bumper will
still mount to the horn bolts.
We
also decided that we wanted the upper support
bar to mount to the bottom cross tube instead
of the top one.
These bumpers take
a small amount of tweaking to get them straight. First we attached the bottom
bars to the horn bolts and tapped it back and forth until it looked straight
with the firewall.
Steve had cut the new cross bars and had to put a slight bend on each side and
notch the ends. While he was welding on the bars, I removed the remains of
the old ones we had already cut off.
Fairly
simple, even for me to get these tabs even
and level on both sides. Jackson and Steve quietly
towered over me to make sure I was doing this
correctly.
OK, our tabs are
welded on so it is time to primer and paint.
We
choose just to paint the rear
bumper black like the side bars. Before we
put in the Red
tail lights, we have to open up the holes
in the tabs a
little. It was a very small amount the we drill
out so the lights would
slide in.
As
you ca see from the photo, these tail
lights have a chrome back to them. We will
be putting on four total red
lights on the bumper.
Our
plan is to have the two outer lights as
the turn signals and the two inner as brake/tail
lights. So then Jackson walks up and asks
me where the license
plate mount is going to go? So we had to
sand down two small section to weld on two tabs on
the freshly painted bumper.
Using an old license plate to line up the tabs,
we started welding.
After
the tabs cooled
down, I grabbed Mr. spray paint can and touched
up my screw up. Steve, our new guy said the from
a distance you can't even tell.
Ok,
we now have our turn signals, tail
lights and license
plate mount that has a light. Soon I hope
we can get this car wired. Next we will do the
front lights.
Thanks
Don
If you have any
questions or comments about Project Baja please e-mail
don@chirco.com
we sure would like to hear from you.