Sport bumper holes, plug or not ?

[Richy]

911kiwi : the hole with the blue arrow is absolutely not for a driving light - it is for a bumper guard bolt as Ed posted .

[NZVW]

Crickey,,, How confusing can 3 holes be ???

Weld them all up and put us out of this misery

[911kiwi]

Thanks for correction Ed and Richy. My 911S is Euro model and was never fitted with front bumper guards/horns. Misinformed all these years!

[Greg D.]

Well I'm certainly glad I asked - that was pretty confusing, but overall what I guessed/feared... Thanks all !

I'm tempted to leave everything as is and reinstall the bumperettes and license plate which will hopefully hide everything... The blue holes are stock and therefore should not be filled - not a huge fan of paying for paint and then putting plastic plugs in the holes if I go overrider free, and spending $ to get the paint guys to fill only the tiny holes and possibly the license plate seems a bit wasteful (and annoying if I get a ticket and redrill them later)...

I've checked google for pics of sports bumpers with/out overriders, seems like the only cars out there with a sports bumper and overriders are 73 with those giant rubber monstrosities - can't find a single pic of a sports bumper with chrome overriders... It may not look great... I'll keep looking, I must decide in a week or so...

[Greg D.]

That the *only* picture I can find of a sports bumper with overriders. While I like the overriders on a regular bumper, they just look "normal", on this sports bumper they looks busy to my eye.... Not the best angle though... If anyone else has a nicer photo please post it !

(and yeah I have the new rubber insert but I keep hearing it's not as nice as the old, and you need to glue the extremities and that looks "meh"... I can reuse the metal base on my current bumper and slide the new insert in it hopefully, if I go overrider free, but that's more potential pitfalls in terms of fit and finish I guess)

[Richy]

You can buy a new rubber insert from Porsche that is one piece , no glueing extremities required .

[jrbennett]

- I've seen some original cars with a plug in there so I thought this was a stock hole... My questions are 1) is that plug findable / is that hole legit ?

I had 2 '73s with the steel "S" bumper, one had over-riders and the other just had the rubber plugs. Replaced the rubber plugs on the one, and removed the over-riders and installed new rubber plugs on the other, also neede a new rubber strip once the over-riders were removed.

I have this listed as the part number for the plugs, 311-611-849. It was no longer available from VW or Porsche a few years ago, however VW has a newer replacement part (8A0-831-449) that fit perfectly .

[Greg D.]

Thank you very much. Looks like what I'll do... It's really cleaner without overriders...

[Greg D.]

It's happening... Match was done on my hood... Always scary but it washes off....

Bumper is now off - Looks like I might need a new seal from behind the aluminum trim, the rest looks reusable !

[Greg D.]

Done...some comments and tips below...

Reaching some of those bumper bolts isn't fun, nor as I found out is threading the new rubber trim on the base, or attaching that deco to the bumper without scratching the hell out of it.. Lots of blue tape was used and some swearing when tearing/peeling it off ;-)

I have plugs painted to fill the overrider holes - wanted the bumper stock... (not yet shown here)

The 2 tiny holes at the bottom are for a plate but they were serious metal inserts so I did not get them filled only to have to redrill them later when I got my first "fix it" ticket - it's a clean insert... Will take beauty pics later...

Thanks for the tip on the 1 piece rubber trim. That is also a trip, because it ends up 2" too short on installation and you have to convince it to slide a bit and make length which is not fun at all unmounted (I'd do it when mounted on the bumper at one end and 90% installed, for better application of force next time). In some ways the 3 piece option, cut to fit, is much easier and I found out that "shoe goo" in black matches the gap really well, but the 3 piece set"ends" are wider than the center part, which is lame, so prferably buy the $$$ 1 piece rubber.. I did both sequentially but ended up using the one piece because I'd bought it anyway and it looks much better..

Another surprise was how dented my original bumper was from the overriders despite the trim piece on those - big grooves there from overtightening or no seal at soem point the life of the car ? I cannot even resell it without reworking the stock bumper unless someone wants bumperettes with.. meh. You can see even the rubber trim base has 2 grooves from that on the left side of the pic from the overriders, but replacing the base trim I understand makes for terrible fit so I reused my stock one and the hell with the little groove.

Love the Sports bumper minus overriders look - need to re-tilt my left side TTL light too, I must have bumped it...