Shaving off the rear bumper

[Jake RAH]

I'm planning on cleaning up the lines of my 260Z over the winter months and would like to remove the four corner markers(lights), the aerial and the rear bumper. The corner markers & aerial seem straight forward enough. Remove, weld in a plate and smooth out with a little filler. The rear bumper looks rather more complicated. Plate behind the shock holes, Plate over the bumper mount recesses and here's the part I'm really not sure about. Losing the bumper recesses in the panels behind the rear wheels. Is the best practice to cut a plate to fill the recess, weld into place and then fill the void with waxoil through the bumper bolt hole from the back. I spoke to one welder today and he suggested cutting out the recess, flattening out the metal work you just cut out and then weld back into place. That seems a bit ott to me. I would imagine some of you guys have done this (shaved off the bumper) to your Zs over the years, What's the best way to do it?
Any advice would be very appreciated as I don't want it ending up looking like the dogs dinner. I won't be doing the work myself or it will look like the dogs dinner

 

[moggy240]

Personally I would leave the bumper recess alone and just weld up the where the bolt goes through.that's what I did.

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[cosworth415]

Why don't you just fill them and spray, you can always take them out again with a brush on a grinder if you change your mind, once welded you can never put them back right.

 

[Jake RAH]

Personally I would leave the bumper recess alone and just weld up the where the bolt goes through.that's what I did.

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I've been running without the rear bumper since April and have thought of leaving the recesses alone but to me it just makes the car look like the bumper is missing, but with everything smoothed out it just looks correct & classy IMO.

Why don't you just fill them and spray, you can always take them out again with a brush on a grinder if you change your mind, once welded you can never put them back right.

I hear what you're saying but isn't that just doing a bodge job? Maybe not, I don't know.
I know once done if I go with plating up the recesses route then the won't be any going back but I really do like that smoothed out clean lines look. My old 240Z that I had back in 90-91 had all the rear smoothed out and for years I thought that was standard & how they came

 

[Rob Gaskin]

There are a few S30s without the rear bumper and I always think it strange that it seems acceptable to just have one bumper - do we know of another car where the trend is to remove just the rear bumper?

Maybe it's because the front looks too aggressive without the bumper splitting the radiator aperture. Is there a front air-dam that refines the look?

 

[Jake RAH]

Look at Fourways, they didn't run rear bumpers on Z's back in the day. Look at some of the Samuri, they didn't have a rear bumper, or even a front bumper come too that. As some re-shaping was also done to the front they look good (IMO), but just pull the front bumper off and you're left with that nasty recess and untidy lines, it just looks a mess. I'm all for a front bumper on a Z
The rear looks good with a bumper but you can really see the sexy curves of that rear end when you remove the bumper. It's just class
I have wondered if the rear of my old 240z was done at the Samuri workshop as the car was local to croughton & Silverstone. Or maybe (over here)shaving off the rear bumper & cleaning up the lines was more common than I thought back in the day. But saying that isn't the rear of most of those bumperless Samuri a rebuilt rear end with new tin?
You see plenty of great examples stateside. It's those sexy rear end curves I tell ya!
As for which other cars have the rear bumpers removed, I don't know, but I do know some of the old classics like the Ferrari 250 GTO didn't sport a rear bumper, or even a front bumper and nobody complains
As for protection I believe having or not having a rear bumper on your Z is going to make very little difference if you get slammed up the rear at anything much above 10mph or so. Which was invented first, the Z or Safety? Wasn't it the Z