Duder
Watch it man, there's a beverage here!
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Location
- Torrance, CA USA
And since Eric reminded me, I tried pulling off the front Commando to get an idea of just how heavy these diving boards are, and how it would affect the static distribution to swap to later, lighter bumpers.
With no front bumper whatsoever, including no bumper shocks, here's what it looked like:
Config. E
LF 751 RF 750
LR 660 RR 660
Total 2820
Cross 1410 50.0%
Left 1411 50.0%
Rear 1320 46.8%
That sucker weighs 40lbs by itself! I haven't even gotten to the rear yet..
I did slap an '84 front bumper on however.
Config. F
LF 763 RF 766
LR 659 RR 657
Total 2844
Cross 1425 50.1%
Left 1422 50.0%
Rear 1316 46.3%
So the lighter front bumper weighs 24 lbs total, and there's a 16 lb reduction by swapping from a Commando to an UnCommando. I'm assuming the rear will show a similar improvement but I haven't done it yet. In addition to lightening the car this of course also reduces polar moment of inertia pretty significantly since the bumpers are at the extreme ends of the car.
Scales_7 by Chris Floren, on Flickr
The car looks a million times better too. I kept putting off this swap because I thought for some reason these later black plastic covers were in worse shape than they really are. Sure there's a few light scuffs but they are cleaning up very nicely. The rubber Commando trim doesn't even look half bad; it just needs to be trimmed at the ends to lay down nicely on the bumper "wings" since they are longer overall.
Scales_6 by Chris Floren, on Flickr
With no front bumper whatsoever, including no bumper shocks, here's what it looked like:
Config. E
LF 751 RF 750
LR 660 RR 660
Total 2820
Cross 1410 50.0%
Left 1411 50.0%
Rear 1320 46.8%
That sucker weighs 40lbs by itself! I haven't even gotten to the rear yet..
I did slap an '84 front bumper on however.
Config. F
LF 763 RF 766
LR 659 RR 657
Total 2844
Cross 1425 50.1%
Left 1422 50.0%
Rear 1316 46.3%
So the lighter front bumper weighs 24 lbs total, and there's a 16 lb reduction by swapping from a Commando to an UnCommando. I'm assuming the rear will show a similar improvement but I haven't done it yet. In addition to lightening the car this of course also reduces polar moment of inertia pretty significantly since the bumpers are at the extreme ends of the car.
Scales_7 by Chris Floren, on Flickr
The car looks a million times better too. I kept putting off this swap because I thought for some reason these later black plastic covers were in worse shape than they really are. Sure there's a few light scuffs but they are cleaning up very nicely. The rubber Commando trim doesn't even look half bad; it just needs to be trimmed at the ends to lay down nicely on the bumper "wings" since they are longer overall.
Scales_6 by Chris Floren, on Flickr
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