Thoughts on moving 73-74 e-body bumpers in?

Hey, I've been thinking about this for a long time. I cant make up my mind about moving my bumpers in on my 74 cuda. I'm still in the middle of the restore, and I'll need to buy new bumpers sometime soon. Pretty sure I will nix the rubber bumperettes in place of the smaller ones in the rear, and none in the front. Just looking for your opinions. PS. Just making a driver.
Thanks.

Mine's a '72 and I do think it makes for a little cleaner look. Of course it wouldn't take too hard a tap and they would be in the sheetmetal.

They do look cleaner moved in. They can easily be moved back out in the future too. Check out this link. It mostly dealt with Challenger bumpers but most of it applies to you too.

https://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/favl...amp;postmarker=

what i did for my 74 Challenger was I got the 70-72 style bumper brackets and bumpers. that easy! it should be the same for a cuda, just get the 70-72 bumper brackets and bumpers. check it though

oh i forgot.

the front might be OK, as was mine, but the back with the filler panel, when you remove the plastic filler panel, you might have to find a filler panel for 70-72. i had to do that for my Challenger too.

74 chally here. got the 70-72 rear bumper brackets and redrilled the front brackets to fit. if you need the rear filler, pm me, got 2 when I ordered mine ( stuck together ). as others have said, should be same process for your car, but not sure if chally rear filler will work for you. I think this really cleans up the look of the 73-74 cars.

AMD makes it easy. Just go buy new 1970-71 Front and rear bumpers and the bumper brackets.
Cuda's do not require a filler panel as mentioned above.

You'll find the AMD bumpers are great for a driver and most likely cheaper then re-chroming your originals.

I did the same thing on my 'Cuda. Bought a set of original brackets for front and rear, removed the extension fillers (that fill the gap between the later-style bumpers and the tail panel and grille) and got a set of perfect rechromed original '70 bumpers from a shop for about $150 each. Picked up new chrome rear bumperettes, bumperette fillers, and brackets from Year One. It looks fantastic and was very easy to do.

FYI, you will want to attach the bumperettes and brackets before putting the rear bumper on. I didn't have the '70 service manual, so I didn't realize this until I already had the bumper installed and adjusted. Real PITA to do after the fact. Also, you will have an open gap between the sides of the rear bumper and the quarter panel. '72-up had the plastic fillers to cover this gap, and the earlier cars had a small metal extension that filled this in. You can either leave it as-is, or make some sort of sheet metal extension.

I did this too. I used my '74 bumpers AND brackets. Redrilled the front brackets like mentioned. I posted some pics in this thread: Snug Your Bumpers Up Cut, overlapped then welded rear brackets to shorten them up. I then used the nice chrome bumperettes to fill the holes in valance where those huge and ugly 5 mph bumperettes were. I had to make the mounting brackets for those as no factory bracket would allow the 70-71 bumperettes to line up nicely on the '74 bumper. I have sets of the cuda bumperettes and mounting brackets for them if you need. I thought maybe cuda stuff could be modified to work but never used them.

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Hey, I've been thinking about this for a long time. I cant make up my mind about moving my bumpers in on my 74 cuda. I'm still in the middle of the restore, and I'll need to buy new bumpers sometime soon. Pretty sure I will nix the rubber bumperettes in place of the smaller ones in the rear, and none in the front. Just looking for your opinions. PS. Just making a driver.
Thanks.

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I did to my 74 Cuda exactly what you are thinking of doing to yours. I drilled a new hole in the front bumper brackets to pull it in (there was one factory hole on each side of the brackets that lined up so only one hole per side needed to be drilled), and took the front bumperettes off. On the rear, I fabricated some bumper brackets by using a torch to heat and bend some quarter inch steel bar, and drilled the mounting holes. It did take a little trial and error, but not too much. I then went with the small chrome bumperettes from a 70 Cuda. I think it looks much better this way. The only problem with doing it the way did is that you can still see where the old bumperettes mounted on the bumpers - there are some indentations from the edges of the old bumperettes in the bumpers, and the chrome on the bumpers is much nicer where it was protected by the bumperettes. However, if you are getting new bumpers this shouldn't be a problem. I believe I also had to drill new holes in the rear bumper to mount the 70 bumperettes, but the bumperettes covered over the old bumperette holes, so the old holes are not visable.

You can also just get 70-71 Cuda bumpers and brackets, I believe they mount right up with no fabrication needed. They are much lighter - the later bumpers have a heavy inner bumper - but those inner bumpers can help reduce damage if you get in a wreck. I was in a wreck in the late 90's that probably would have totaled my Cuda if not for the inner bumper, and it did total the Toyota that caused the accident. That's something to keep in mind if you're just making a driver and aren't too concerned with the added weight.