No More Diving Board.

After much contemplation and speculation, I was given a nudge by some car buddies over breakfast this morning to do something about the massive bumper on the front of the car. There were a few options such as "tucking" the bumper, by drilling holes in the shocks and pushing the bumper in a little towards the car (this was the most popular alternative). There were a few other tricks to make the bumper not look so long, but they were more complicated and I'm really not that great at fabricating car parts. I decided to completely eliminate the extra foot of space on the front end, and I have read the bumper really doesn't do much for accidents anyway. When I was starting this project today, I figured it would take me an hour to get everything off and cleaned up.

There was one bolt on each shock aborber located in the engine bay that I needed to get access too. The one in the pic below happened to be under the battery. So after searching for the bolts, I removed the battery. You can see the whole where the 21mm bolt use to reside.



After getting those two bolts, I took off the coverings on the sides of the bumper and on top/below the bumper. It was going rather smoothly. I couldn't help but notice how much dirt was in the fenders and around the motor as it continually poured down on me when I was struggling to get bolts out. At one point, there were two bolts on the inside of each fender well and I had to jack up the car and remove the tire just to get to the bolts.

Here is a picture of all the dirt after I was done:



Everything went really smooth until I ran into a snag. If you work on cars, you know that this ALWAYS happens with something stupid. I'm not going to go into detail, but if you have worked on a car or another project you know what this next picture depicts (1.5 hours).



But, when it was all said and done I felt pretty good about having the bumper off. I think tomorrow I'm going to "tuck" the rear bumper and leave it on.

Before Pic:



After today:



I really like it! When the car goes in for paint I'm going to have the body shop fill all of the holes on the front and sides as well as the side markers on the front and back of the car. I do think the car needs a lip or something. I am still debating on exactly which lip, but I really like this one below:

It's called the Kamei Lip...


I'm leaning towards this lip right now, but I might change by the time paint comes around. AND, here are the left over parts and a bag of bolts after today's fiasco.



I think the car is really going to come together with a lip, all the holes filled, and dent removal/fresh paint in the near future! Additionally, I have put 65 miles on the car in the past two days and I feel like every day I drive the '02 she runs better and better! I can't believe how awesome she runs :)