Articles

1970 Charger & Coronet Front Bumper Guards/Bumperettes
With text & photos by Barry Washington

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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