or, Can Someone Find Us a Decent Rear Bumper?

The saga began in September 1996. I decided that Evie (AU2831/C342161) needed her rear bumper fixed before the Rally in Masterton. It had had a few dings a number of years previously, and corrosion had set in. My regular repairer reckoned on a week to two weeks to get it straightened and re-chromed. Not so: a distressed phone call a few days later confirmed that the bumper was too far gone to do anything with, so I duly went and collected the bumper and its associated bits of hardware.

Masterton came and went, with no chance of winning the Concours minus a rear bumper....

At Masterton, one of our members kindly offered to send down a spare bumper that he had, "a bit rough, but possibly worth straightening". It was duly sent down early this year and taken along with the original bumper to a new repairer to assess. "Yes," was the answer, we should be able to make a decent bumper out of these two. Give us eight weeks." In the end we left everything a bit longer owing to an intervening honeymoon. We returned in June and contacted our repairer. "We're still having a lot of problems," he said, five months after starting the project. "There just isn't enough metal there to straighten either of them out properly." Away came the bumpers, together with a pair of Concours-standard overriders which had been completed in our absence.

At this point our Editor came into the fray with another fairly well-gone bumper, which we gladly accepted in case parts could be used. Meantime Ivan Gardiner reported seeing a 346 Sparesmobile advertised in the Classic press for $300. "This is less than I was quoted for repairing the bumper," I thought. We called by Fordell on a trip to Wanganui in July and checked the car over. The bumper didn't look too bad (well, it was straight-ish) and there were plenty of bits and bobs that Evie could do with, as well as a decent windscreen and grille that we could keep as spares. We duly began negotiations to get the car down. Ivan kindly lent us a space on his building site to store the "new" car, and down it came on the back of a tow-truck in mid-August.

Before the new car even came down we had offers of a "wrecking party" - our local friends Ivan, Carl and James were raring to get stuck in and pull it to bits. Sunday 23 August was the day, and in not quite ideal weather we got stuck in and had it reduced to its chassis before we went home. The accompanying pictures show some of the progress, including Rita's preferred mode of relaxation (under the dashboard), Carl's "frontal" approach to dashboard removal (not quite what Terry Bishop imagined when writing his instructions a few years ago...) and Ivan's transition from loving Armstrong owner to axe-wielding maniac. Not shown in the pictures is the sumptuous selection of food and drink which was provided by Valrae, Jo and Jenny - thanks, everyone!

Details of the old car, for the record-keepers, are as follows: Mk I synchro 346, 1954, reg. no BW7720, chassis C342892, body (what was left between the tinworm) 25-1-2583. We did intend to take the non-salvaged bits to the tip when we finished, but it turned out the engine still went (something else for us to store) and Ivan, well, had this idea about building a pickup on the chassis.... A last-minute reprieve, perhaps?

I started off talking about bumpers, didn't I? The day after the party we took the new bumper, along with our three old ones, down to our repairers. Some cautious intakes of breath, a few taps with the peen hammer on the rusty bits (straight through) and a promise to report back. One of the junior staff asked if AS Motors had got a special deal on Russian steel in 1954! The saga isn't finished, but it looks like we're going to have to cobble together a makeshift bumper by bogging up the new one and painting it over for the time being. Anyone got a genuine decent rear 346 bumper for sale?

Martin & Rita