Greetings, it has been a few months since posting last. Had to take a break...it's was the car or the wife! What can I say... I have needs...yes dear!!! We are not happy with the alignment of the front bumper to the front quarter panels. See Pics below....
Can we adjust this by loosening the bolts that are holding the ENTIRE bumper unit to the subframe OR do we need to remove it piece by DAM piece?...lights, beezel covers rubber ect ect and replace.
I am not a perfectionist nor is this a show car but it's a pisses me off when I look at it.
They should be holding your nose all the way up. If not, maybe you have the headlight support plate bolted on low somehow. Take a close look at that gusset and work your way down until you see where you can make up the distance to raise the nose.
Unfortunately I cannot open those pics at work, but yes ,you can loosen the two brackets that hold the entire unit and pull up, if thats whats needed...we recently did that on a friends car here.
The 4 large bolts that hold the whole bumper support can be loosened and the whole thing can be lifted. I wanted to start with the gusset supports because if they were tight the nose should line up.
last year I had the whole front of nose of my 69 off to replace a bezel and the bezel cushion. It's not that hard...the hardest part is not breaking a headlight bezel. Since I've been there, my advise would be to leave it alone...
There is almost an infinite amount of adjustments than can be made in several different places to fix your problem. Look around and you will see carrage bolts all over the place to adjust the whole nose laterally and vertically, and to adjust each headlight frame individually. Remove your chrome headlight surrounds and the headlights. You will see two lower bolts, and an upper bolt. I believe you will also have to remove the fog/driving lights below the headlights to access the nuts. Once you have loosened them the headlight assy should slide. The lower bolts that hold the front chrome nose may also need to be loosened. They can be used to adjust the angle of the bezel.
Just be very, very carefull! The bezel (headlight surround) will break very, very easily! NEVER force it. Apply force to the metal parts only, if requird. DONT set it up such that the bezel cushion is pushed against the fender, this puts the bezel fasteners under tension. If you ruin the bezel you will have to install a new one and paint to match.
Thanks for the advice. We'll loosen the subframe bolts and give it a lift in an attempt to take care of the issue. Any other info would be appreciated.
Hey Garz, Let me know how it turns out. I need a little bit of adjustment on mine also. I think I tried loosening the frame bolts only on mine and it wouldn't budge. Maybe have to loosen other stuff too. That was as far as I got and decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Good luck.
It's all in the corner gusset supports and the support arms that go down to the frame. The corner gussets set height and the big arms make it sturdy for crashes. There's one other adjustment point but it just changes the angle of the dangle. Check out my alignment and you know there's no BS. After you restore a few 9's(start to finished) there are no more nose mysteries.
looks perfect Jim. The front end of my car was "modified" by a telephone pole years ago, so getting the nose just right is REAL fun!
I replaced my body bushings last night, and now my nose is not lining up too well, so I'll be digging in this morning. The old bushings were so shot it wasn't even funny.
This 'nose moving around' symptom has me thinking about those corner gussets again. If they aren't tight the nose will even move when you jack up the car. Of course, all bets are off if your body mounts are moving......
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