Most of us 1970 Mopar owners have discovered
that many 1970 model year parts are quite specific &
not interchangeable. This is the case here.
The 'uni-brow' steel cross brace (1) that
connects to the bottom of the front bumper brackets is common
to all 1970 Chargers & Coronet models when equipped
with the M81 option for front bumper guards or the M85 option
on Coronets that included front & rear bumper guards.
Someone on an internet forum
long ago asked if the front bumper guards were the same
for these cars & I had been told they were, so I repeated
what I had been told & I was wrong!
No one is ever right all the
time, so I took it as an opportunity to learn from my mistake
& I have.
I finally had the opportunity
to do a side by side comparison & below you will see
some photos & descriptions that will hopefully help
anyone searching for much needed parts for their particular
car.
In our first image, the Coronet
bumperettes are on the left with the adapter brackets needed
to mount them to the inner brace & the Charger bumperettes
are on the left. As a quick visual clue here to help ID
them visually, notice that the Coronet versions have long,
narrow lower mounting holes while the Charger units have
a larger diameter round hole. Both sets are shown with one
rubber insert removed, more on this coming up below.
Here we can see the same parts
so you can compare the side profiles & lower mount angles
& hole, once again the Coronet parts at left & the
Charger parts at right;
We can see here that the Coronet
& Charger front profile is very much the same but not
quite identical. Notice that the hole spacing for the rubber
insert is identical to both units with the back side of
an insert shown between them, this rubber insert will interchange
for both models.
Moving on to the Coronet only
adapter brackets needed to attach the bumperettes to the
cross brace, one is shown here with the mounting nuts on
& another with them off so you can see the original
thread locks. Using these here & there on the cars allowed
the needed hardware to stay together & also allowed
for a faster 'one man' final installation on the assembly
line.
The same brackets again with
one flipped over so you can see the captive u-nut used to
mount it to the cross brace.
Here is a closeup of the mounting
holes in a cross brace. The Chargers only needed the middle
threaded hole with the captive nut for the mounting bolt
to pass through & the Coronets only used the two outer
holes for the brackets shown above.
Here is another side profile,
Coronet parts bolted together at left with the Charger bumperette
at right.
This is how they look from the
front, Coronet with mounting bracket at left & Charger at
right;
Footnote;
(1) Some refer to this brace
as a 'bow tie' but bow ties are for Chebbies!
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