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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - Rubber bumpers

Hi folks
Just joined the site as I'm considering buying a midget.
I'm not a lover of the rubber bumpers and would like to remove these and possibly replace with chrome bumpers.
I have done a search but can't find anything relating to this, I know it will not be a new question, but what is involved in junking the rubber bumpers?
Gordon Bradford

Hi Gordon,

To cut a long story short, if you want chrome bumpers, buy a chrome bumper car!

They aren't really that much more expensive and cheaper/easier than converting a rubber bumper car. There were some signifficant structural changes between the cars which means that converting rubber to chrome requires a fair amount of cutting and welding of the body I'm afraid.

Hence why internet searches don't really come up with anything, because few people bother with the conversion.

Cheers,
Malcolm
Malcolm Le Chevalier

Just to give you more of an idea of what's involved you would need to consider (off the top of my head):

Front:

Buying bumpers.
New front wings and indicators.
New grille.
Modifications (cutting) to front structure to remove bumper supports.
Sorting bracketry to attach chrome bumpers.
Number plate mounting.
Alterations to front suspension so it doesn't ride high.

Rear:

Buying bumpers.
Cutting/welding of rear panel and inside boot to remove bumper supports.
Welding of missing section under rear lights (part of the rear wing panel).
Sorting out bracketry for new bumpers.
Number plate mounting and lights.
Alterations to suspension so it doesn't ride high.

Cheers,
Malcolm
Malcolm Le Chevalier

Hi Gordon,

With the restoration work I am going through at the moment my advise would be to work out your maximum budget and then find the best example of Midget that you can find with as little work to do.

That way you can be enjoying your car sooner rather than spending time and money with the car stuck in the garage.

But I suppose that depends on what you want to get out of this project

Good luck

James
James Paul

Just remove the bumpers and make good; no need to replace with chrome ones... lowering suspension after removing weight is relatively easy/inexpensive.

A
Anthony Cutler

I have just converted a my wifes car from rubber bumper to no bumper. We are in two minds wether or not we will add the chrome bumper (although we have bought one that needs re chroming). Anyways, I have some pictures of the process which I will try and show you, but not sure how this forum works in relation to the images displaying.

The first thing I did is buy a couple of the older type wing segments from a local MG second hand parts supplier. They only cost me £10 each side and he had cut them off a couple of old wings that were beyond repair.


[IMG]http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l234/rendersonique/20130331_125053_zpsc52abdf6.jpg[/IMG]



AJ Burrows

The second part of the process was to cut out the parts of the older type wing and match them into the Rubber bumber wing on my wifes car. This meant cutting out more of our wing to accommodate the donor part


AJ Burrows

Once the parts were perfectly matched in I leaded the edges using a fine tipped blow torch and some metal solder making sure there was nothing protruding too high that may cause problems during the body filler stage....later


AJ Burrows

A small hole was still exposed to one side so this was patched in the back with Fiberglass


AJ Burrows

Here you can see that both sides have been body filled and one side is primed


AJ Burrows

Finally its given a coat of paint


AJ Burrows

And a here is the end result. You will see that there is a stainless steel grill fitted. To fit this I had to cut off the rubber bumper retaining threads that protruded from the strengthening beams. The grill looks fine where it is imho, but a purist may say that it should sit a little further back. This would mean extensively butchering things more that I already have ;)

Hope this helps. I understand the rear of mine needs to be sorted and I will try and upload images of the process when I get would to it.


AJ Burrows

I would just like to add that the cost of our conversion was approximately £100. £20 for the older wing sections, £28 each for the indicators, then there was the filler, fiberglass and paint.

The cost of one new wing would have been more than the cost of the conversion so I feel it was the right decision based on the budget we have. Also, I have had some experience with bodywork and I have the tools to do it, but this process may put some people off considering this as an option. I just thought that it may help the original poster to make a decision.

Cheers

Andy

PS. I do find this forum (BBS) hard to use :( I am used to forums that let you link [IMG] tags into a thread. Far better and much neater than having one image per post.
AJ Burrows

I converted mine about 10 years ago and I enjoyed the work required. I bought my Midget to fiddle with and make it the way I wanted it, and I certainly never liked the rubber bumpers.

The weight saving by removing the bumpers is quite considerable and it may cause the front to look a bit higher but that is easily sorted, as said by others.

If this link works it should go to a site relevant to your question, although they didn't stop at just removing the bumpers but replacing them with chrome as I did.(see picture below)

http://npmccabe.tripod.com/mgbumpers.htm

(remember your insurance company has to be told, to be sure you are covered)


JB Anderson

JB,
Hmmm,would have been nice to have had that link about 3 weeks ago when I convinced my wife that removing the rubber bumper was the way to go. However, what little info I had about the process was enough to get the job done, and after reading the link, I think i wasn't too far off the mark ;)

Your car does look fab!
Andy Burrows

"The grill looks fine where it is imho, but a purist may say that it should sit a little further back."

Andy would these be the High Priests who would say after much face twisting and sucking air through their teeth,
" Aye, you must remember that is a 1966 car and the grill on your car is held in by cross headed screws, the factory used plain slotted screws until 1967" then they walk away shaking their heads.

eddie
Eddie Cairns

a purist wouldn't like the grille full stop (fact, end - for our younger viewers) or any treatment to the car as they know (fact, end) it should have been when it left the factory (without ever been there of course)
Nigel Atkins

Modifing midget is as old as the brand MG!
It is how it all started.
But considering that I would urge you to buy a car that meets your wishes as good as posible.
I will in the long run save you money and it will let you enjoy it now!

Not a personal fan of converted RB cars. A lowered lighter RB car can be a lot of fun and still be a honest car.
A converted one can't as you simply don't know how a next owner will advertise it
Onno K

<<A converted one can't as you simply don't know how a next owner will advertise it>>

I'm not sure that anyone modifying their car would need to worry about that.
Dave O'Neill2

The way that myself and my wife view things is that the car has a very good body due to a previous restoration, it didn't cost us a fortune to start with as it wasn't advertised very well, and the modifications I am undertaking is keeping the cost down substantially above and beyond paying a professorial to do the work.

All in all, we get a car that we know is honest, appeals to the eye more so than the its original guise (I don't hear many people saying they want rubber bumper midgets), and hasn't cost a packet. If we did come to sell, looking at the prices we probably wouldn't loose money on it. :)

Andy Burrows

You are quite right Andy, it is your car and there is nothing dishonest about modifying it in any way you like although some immediately assume you are doing it to sell it as an original non rubber bumper car, which is a bit of a liberty.

The looks of the car are so much improved without the cumbersome bumpers that I really dont see why the value should be so much less than an original rubber bumpered car, which were never highly priced anyway.Unless of course it was a mint condition unmolested example in which case to make it non-standard would be risking losing quite a bit of money if you were to sell it.

I have no intention of ever selling mine and find without the bumpers it performs better and looks better, so I am very happy with it.

You did a great job of the new front lamp mountings, I wish I could get results like that from filler and aerosol cans!
JB Anderson

To me, there is something really tacky about de-bumpering a 1500. Why get a car that pretends to be something else? Just get the 'something else' in the first place.

There is a lot of snootiness about the 1500 and the bumpers but it is what it is, more powerful, SAFER, of it's time and less polluting etc

I love my rubber bumper to bits: one of the reasons I love it is because folks who would de-bumper one wouldn't! Others hate the fact it has a triumph engine, I like this because they don't! I also love it's BL badges because of the history of BL and that the MG logo was destroyed the day it went on the front of a maestro. BL is extinct, rarer and strangely exotic (in my mind anyway).


When I think of my car, I think of endless 70's strikes. . . . I bet my car spent a year and a half on the assembly line because of the strikes! It is what it is, it is of it's time!

The height of the car is in-keeping with the bumpers and taking them off without lowering would be ugly as sin.


Buy one, debumper it, enjoy it. I do however object to the stupid conformity of many in the midget 'community' that despises it's most up to date example just because of some safety features, different handling etc. . .



d j kirk

I personally don't mind rubber bumpers - I have a rubber bumper V8 which is a great looking car. My son who has just turned 18 has just bought his first car - a 1500 midget with frogeye style bumpers, which I think is an interesting twist on a theme! Dave
DM Gibson

I've always wondered about the legality of removing the bumpers altogether. Surely The Construction and Use Regulations along with Type Approval would make such a modification an M.O.T. Failure. After all, aren't bumpers a safety device?

There are so many examples out there that I suppose I must be wrong!
Eamonn Spencer

I can understand both points of view really. I wouldn't say the rubber bumper was particularly ugly. In fact I think that all of the people that are converting their rubber bumpers to chrome, are maybe at some point in the future going to be reverting back because they will probably be more eye catching as they are probably going to be a rarer sight on the roads.

I know I am as guilty as the next person that does the conversion, but I have a habit of modifying every vehicle I own (for the better I think). I have an Elise (modified), Mini 1275GT (modified), 1979 Vespa (modified) but I do it because it increases my enjoyment of driving / riding them :)
Andy Burrows

Dont worry Andy,
Mine is a 1975 midget with the bumpers removed.
From a whole line up of ex US midgets I picked the one I have now.
There were about 3 rubberbumpers and 5 chrome bumpers and I picked a Tahiti blue rubberbumpermidget, never regrated it.
After a full nut&bolt restauration ive enjoyed it so much but then came the day when I drove mine on a towbar of a Volkswagen van...

With the ensurance money I rebuild it bumperless, the money that in 1998 was asked for a nice used front rubber bumper was redicilous.
Opted for bumperless then and went "naked" front & back.
Not bad for performance either as long as you lower it.

No regrads of that and the about 100 other mods ive done on my car since.
Its your car, do what you want to it and let the next owner worry about original or not.
Its not like we are screwing up 1 out of 3 built 1930's Bugatti. :)


Btw, ive done the same on welding in used 1275 indicator panelbits in my 1500 frontwings.


Arie de Best

I 1976 when I was working in Chelmsford, there was a girl from the hairdressing salon downstairs who had her sprite updated by adding rubber bumpers. At the time everyone said how much better and more modern it looked!
Below is a picture of my son's first car he has just turned 18


DM Gibson

If its a sin just to remove the rubber bumpers from a 1500 I'm pretty sure I'm going to hell.
Bob T

See you there Bob, ive heared hell is also where all the naugthy girls go to! ;)
Arie de Best

This thread was discussed between 08/04/2013 and 20/04/2013

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