'67 rear bumper bracket color
 

As I was blasting dirt and rust off these bumperette brackets, this emerged and appears to be a silver paint. Where these silver from the factory ?


https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...s/DSC09766.JPG


So now I am wondering about the rest of them. The center bracket did appear to be black, but the rest had 3 layers of paint and rust and I didn't really see anything of a base color.


https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...s/DSC09764.JPG


Thanks for any help/insight on this.

Mitch,

Yes. I have seen them silver. FWIW...the bracket portion that hooks to the guard is in the line of sight from the rear of the car, so If it was left natural it would rust and look bad pretty quick and if painted black it would also stand out.

Silver paint was neutral and the thought is that sometimes only a portion of the bracket (the part that was visible) was painted.

My bumper brackets were black paint, the bumper guards were either very poor chrome or silver zinc. I opted to powder coat them. When I sent the bumper guard brackets (and the rest of my hardware) to Rich for plating, he did them in black oxide which isn’t correct but looks good.

If I remember correctly, your car was low miles and original. Hadn't considered a silver zinc. Could be a possibility. My car is LA built too, 02C
Mine was and will be, Granada Gold again too. I might even look at painting them to match so they blend in..:dunno:

Mitch,

Does the remaining coating tend to peel off like paint or flake off like paint? You could also try some reducer and see if it attacks the surface. You see sliver on the rag you will know conclusively if it was paint or not.

Here are a few of an unrestored car.

Here are the brackets that Mitch is asking about. This is a known 10K mile car that has been discussed here on this site.

Here's just the bumperette bracket. It looks chrome.

Thanks, Steve, I did respray all the main mounting brackets semi gloss epoxy black.
Steve's extension brackets appears to be black.

Brackets on the 10k car are definitely silver.

I didn't get around to doing any testing on mine, but I believe it is argent silver paint. The color is very similar to the rally wheels I have.
Steve's car is a Norwood build and mine is LA. Could be a plant variant, as we've seen with other anomalies...:dunno:

I'll test with thinner later today.

It certainly does ! I wonder if that was a revision for later cars ?

OK, mine are painted, I can wipe it off with thinner, so they will get painted Argent Silver. I just happen to have a 1/2 pint left from Terry Davis mixed for my '66 Chevelle front valance.

THANKS to everyone for the input.

This is the bracket from my September 66 Van Nuys built car. We previously discussed the bumper guard placement on my car, seems the vendor making the bracket and or bumper guards had supply shortages and delivered early cars to dealers missing the guards. The guards were later shipped to the dealers so they could install them on their in stock units or already sold cars.

Thanks, Chuck, it does look kinda like silver paint.

It was more like flash chrome, like a bumper bolt or something. Like chromed but not polished before the chroming process... silver zinc maybe. Not sure what it was, but definitely not painted. It was plated.

OK, thanks !

The early 67 GMAC invoices note that the cars were shipped short the bumper guards. :)

Wonder what else was missing?

Correct. My car was one of those, hence their installation in the "wrong" position. From my understanding the selling dealer installed them after receiving them from GM.

Things like this still happen to this day due to issues with various vendors, logistics etc.

I don't know that they are wrong. My bumper has holes in those positions too, but the tail panel holes line up with the locations closer to the center. Is it possible engineering decided to move them after initial production ? My bumper is a replacement, over the counter part, and why have 2 different hole locations ??

I believe the extra hole is for the pin on the bumper jack hook to fit into.

That's there too, in the mounting bracket for support. There is another hole between that and the bumperettes. I'll get a pic and post it.

I got a pic of my bumper with the extra hole between my bumperette and the jack pin hole. Looks like it would be the same location as Chuck Burgs car with the bumperette's spaced wider apart.

• https://www.yenko.net/forum/cache.ph...Bquality%3D100

Definitely Mitch. As we discussed to length mine was most likely delivered without guards, only to receive the guards when the dealer received them from GM. The dealer probably just installed them how they thought they should be installed. I know mine were always spaced out since there is no evidence of other holes ever being made in the rear lower valance.

And that begs the question, were the tail panels pre-punched in line with the outer holes, or did the employees drill the holes ?

I doubt you paid any attention to them while painting the car, but there are 2 panels there and the punched holes rarely matched up perfectly and would have a little of the other showing. If the holes are perfectly aligned, I would think they were drilled at the time of install.

I did look at the holes since I disassembled the rear bumper and reassembled it. The holes were clean, leading me to believe the holes were in fact drilled by the original installer of the bumper guards, most likely the dealership after the car was already sold. My guess is the dealership contacted the customer after GM sent the dealership the missing bumper guard parts. Most likely was a supply shortage issue with the vendor who made the bumper guards. Things like this still happen today...

According to the Legends judging manual, there are two types of bumper guards used in 67. One is fully chromed and the bracket is welded to the guard. One has the bracket painted silver that is bolted to the guard. Here is a photo example of one of each in my garage. The one piece chromed unit is NOS.

Thanks, Jose, mine is the bolted variety and the bracket was painted silver.
Interesting that the other is welded and chromed with the guard. I wonder if Steve's example is a welded one ?

The bolted bracket is a lot longer. They are using the same body mounting holes??

I noticed that too and didn't think much of it. The bracket on Steve's car appears to be the short one with chrome, but mounts in the same area of the tail panel to inner brace flange. Some further research needed here ? Doesn't seem like the guards could be the same length as the bolted, but it appears to be in Jose's pic ?



https://www.yenko.net/forum/attachme...1&d=1670857966

Not that it matters or helps but while going through parts last week this thread popped in my head while moving this bumper around and figured I'd add photos. I might pull them off and soak in evapo just to get a better look. But appears silver paint.