sorry man but its true just too mustang like

i love it. i have been lookin for ideas for the same thing, and that is spot on

did this ever happen or not just curious

although I love the front end of the third gen I think that If you like It like that than nobody on here should be able to disuade you from doing what you want its your car! I think it looks good from what i can see dont listen to these stock only freaks! make your car your own and dont listen to any body else

3x

That was the first thing I thought of .... don't shorten the bumper, extend the hood.

It's YOUR car, YOU drive it. Make it into what YOU want!
Whatever you do, good luck. Keep us updated.

Original post is well over 2 years old. I wonder if someone ever ended up fabricating a new front bumper and would even be more curious to find out if it passes technical inspection.

Anyways, I think modifying a thirdgen into something which more resembles a firstgen is not nescessarily bad. I would personally not do it because I really like the thirdgen design but this did come to mind (sorry for the somewhat messy sketch)



The thirdgen chassis leaves plenty of space to do this once the complete front is removed. Fitting a modern bumper, the roound headlights, extending and accentuating the hood for about 1" to create the same arrow shape the firstgen had and cutting the lower aero back to te exact location of the original airdam would mean you would still have full fuctionality of all parts. Would be a lot of fabrication work and good luck in finding that grille, but when consideing this (and there is still alot to improve i the above sketch) it would not look like a complete waste of a good car.

As said, personally I will not try something like this because I just like the shape of the thirdgen as it is.

That's a really cool sketch... I'm guessing you don't have a scanner to scan in? I am doing a sketch as well... It is taking longer than I remember. I have been dabbling with this idea as well. I thought about instead of shaving the bumper cover, extending the hood 2-3 inches forward and cutting out the center portion and making it all recessed like where the headlights are (basically just extending that line across the bottom of the cut out). Then adding to the ends to match up with the hood line. I wonder if you could use the hood from a '68 in your sketch?

No, I do not have a scanner but as a photographer I could take a picture to the same effect if that would be of use for you? I ocasionally do some repro-photography and have the nescessary equipment for that, which would create a picture as accurate as a scan.

As for the sketch, I went from a picture taken with a wide angle lens to save me some time. The above took me some 5-10 minutes all in all, but still should be within (when enlarging to full scale and taking into account the correction for the perspective of a 28mm focal length lens) 1-2" of the original (car itself) so it is quite accurately the original hood I used and extended towards the front. Here is the picture I used for reference http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...s/MCR_0013.jpg

That´s my thirdgen, and yes, the rims have to go

From memory the 1st gen hood is a bit less wide compared to the thirdgen hood so fitting would be difficult. Might be misstaking there though. Aftermarket companies offer 1st gen style bolt on cowls however.

Completely extending the original hood I think is more problematic then cutting the nose back. The hood slopes down quite drastically on the last bit so you would have to change the curve the hood makes, then extend it to prevent the Nissan Silvia look from happening (compare with this http://www.240sx.ca/ff_i/mercedeh%20sil80-2.jpg) and re-inforce the bit you weld on to prevent it from curving up when it catches wind.

You would also have to build on top of the stock ABS(?) plastic nose which is problematic. If you would use glassfibre it would be hard to prevent it from cracking/chipping paint at the joint to the original nose cone.

From a technical point of view rebuilding the nose completely is easiest. You can still use the ground effects though as the come seperately.

In the sketch I made I reduced front overhang as far as possile by re using the original light mounts, re using most of the original impact bar. Some cutting will be required there to place the ground effects as far back as I did located behind the original nose cone, and re using the ground effects.

It would be interesting to see a version with extended hood however. Do you intend to use smaller lights or place them further down?