EPILOGUE:
I figured I owed some "after pics" of this exercise.
Caveats: Every piece of metal involved, short of the repro bumper, is old and apparently the victim of the
P.O.'s garage wall boo-boo; further, I'm no bodywork guy and lack even rudimentary body tools.
All that aside, this will mark the first time Fred has had the radiator support brace and the air shield in place:
(That radiator support took a LOT of "persuasion" in both torsional and horizontal planes to get the bolt in it).
Next step is obviously an attempt at getting some paint on some things...
poor grille support was some kind of mangled as well, too.
Not the optimal gap from side to side when seen from above. I know the bumper
is in the correct position (at least as judged off each fenders' side marker), so that leaves
the mangle factor of the air shield itself (a lot of pounding took place to make it "flat"
again for sure) as well as the poor radiator support.
At least the radiator appears equally parallel when used as a judge on it...
The bumper, not previously suspected of being crooked....now isn't.
Poor lightly damaged grille got a little attention, too - but honestly needs replaced someday.
Summary:
At first, I was genuinely embarassed that I hadn't even approached this old damage to Fred before
now - but to give myself some slack, up until now, there's always been more important mechanical
and functionality stuff to be handled as the years went on...
It's probably more a statement of how "finished" I (and the car, of course) are to being that I finally
decided to take these old parts out and figure out where they actually went on the car.
Kind of a fun little project in the end, with of course some help from you guys!
Lastly....
No polar bears were harmed in the performance of all this red-neckery
@Sahara !
