With any luck my firebird will soon see fresh paint, but until then I'm trying to decide what front bumper to go with. The gfx are coming off, thats for sure. I have front and rear bumpers off of an 83' Trans Am I'm considering using, but while looking at my 86' Trans Am the other day I started thinking about keeping my 88' front bumper on the car, and just deleting the bumper pads. Without the bumper pads the bumper would like like a Trans Am bumper without the gfx molded in. So I photoshoped myself an example real quick. Heres my car, before photoshop, and after with the pads deleted, let me know what you think.

 

im diggin' the Delete. just my 2 cents

 

Looks good, but I hope you are REALLY good with body work to pull that off.

 

I've never cared for the Bumperettes; If you do decide to keep them, get a rear bumper to match...

 

Thanks for the feedback guys,

Agreed, I havn't quite decided how to approach it if I decide to go that route, my dad and grandfather were both proffesional autobody guys, so I have lots of help, but I never specialized in autobody myself. I'll get some ideas from them, but when the nice warm weather finally gets here I'll pop out the pads and get a good idea of what exactly I'm looking at doing.

Looking at it now though it seem a bit plain without the bumper pads, but the pads seem too much to me as well, might have to find a way to fill some of the space, maybe a tasteful "Firebird" decal on the driverside lower corner of the bumper?

 

I am kind of thinking I have seen a stock production front bumper like the photoshopped one before but I can't find anything on the internet. Could be wrong, it would be a good question to ask in the history section. Anyways, if you want to try to make the bumper a reality, it might be better just to cut up a 85-90 T/A bumper, maybe not though.

 

I can't think of a stock production bumper that looks like that unless you are thinking the 82-84 with the panels instead of the grills. Outside of that it was either the 91/92 style, bumperettes, or the 85-90 Trans Am w/ molded ground effect style.

 

I had considered the idea of finding a T/A bumper, but to be honest if I did I'd probably just slap the whole T/A aero package on the car, lol, plus if I did go that route it might be harder, considering I would have to cut off the bottom, then glue the air dam mounting lip up higher on the bumper. If I use my current bumper I only have to fill the voids where the pads were, which is still not simple. I can find urethane much like the 3M bumper repair kit but in a larger quantity and use mesh cloth as reenforcement and urethane over it. My only problem with that is the possibility of it cracking or seperating after the paintjob or something.

 

Looks good.

 

Got rid of Mine, Best Body mod I ever did!

 

Thats exactly what I have if I decide not to modify my 88 bumper cover, the 83' with the panels. I've seen your car on here a lot and love the mods you've done, I plan on doing a lot of the same mods, except I'm probably going to paint my bird yellow with silver decals.

 

Dude, I have wanted to paint my car Yellow since I bought it back in March of 98. Someday........

If you have any questions or are looking for tips on anything I have done, feel free to email ( mnformula350@hotmail.com )or PM me

 

Awsome, thanks! I've always loved yellow on firebirds, when I was shopping for my second third gen I almost bought an 88 Trans Am that was yellow, but it had too much rot, when I found my 91' I knew I was going to paint it yellow. I have all the silver decals ready to go, and all the black interior peices to convert from the grey interior, even have a NOS hood bird/stripe decal for the turbo bulge, all thats missing is the money to get the paint done .

Well I've decided when I have the time and the weather is nice I'm going to attempt the bumper pad delete, so when I get started I'll do a write up with plenty of pics.