Collapsing US bumpers: safe?

[timjmcconnell at gmail.com (Timbo)]

ALL US spec bumpers are designed to take a < 5mph impact and the car
will have no frame damage. The bumper may be
scraped/cracked/dented/destroyed - but the car is just fine.

This aparantly only works on older sciroccos - something like up to 85
or 86 I think.

Newer cars just have a solid bracket. Old cars have shocks with
hydraulic fluid in them. Drill a hole, WEAR EYE GOGGLES - I'm not
kidding - it will spray right at you. Wear a hat too!

--Timbo

On 7/13/05, GGehrke <ggehrke@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm thinking of collapsing my big ugly US bumpers, but I'm curious
> what sort of crash protection they actually do provide.  Does anyone
> know what the official spec is (i.e. were they designed to resist a
> 10mph hit or something to that effect) or what consequence there would
> be to having the shocks emptied?
> At this point I'm not terribly concerned with doing it for it's
> aesthetic value because the car's pretty rough looking anyways, but I
> have them off for powerwashing and repairing a bit of rust, so I'm
> thinking I might as well.  The car looks so good without any bumpers
> on it, too.  If it's genuinely unsafe I'd rather just keep them as is
> for now, though.
> 
> Oh, and I just finished power washing the car.  Did a real bang up job
> on the paint. Flaked right off all over the place.  Now the car's
> literally about 6 different colours.  It was intentional, but ugh.
> 
> Other recent projects:
> My headlights died and I couldnt find the problem (sockets fine,
> switch fine, fuse fine, etc etc) so I just wired them up with heavy
> gauge wire to toggle switches on the dash.
> New cable from battery to starter and ground strap to hopefully fix
> other electrical gremlins and starting problems.  It does actually
> seem to run much better!  It starts without me having to give it any
> gas and idles more smoothly.
> Painted my dash black to fix scuffs and petrified duct tape residue from the PO.
> Seafoam!  Timbo was right, fun smokescreen!  This helped reveal, too,
> though, that my entire exhaust system is shot.  Smoke poured not only
> out the tailpipe but exited at various other locations down the whole
> length.
> Vacuum and febreeze the interior.
> 
> Plus I helped my buddy cut his M3's exhaust in half, gut the cat and
> weld it back together.  That was pretty fun too :)
> 
> -Grant-
> 
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-- 
Early 84 Scirocco 8v Alpine White
Early 84 Scirocco 8v Pewter Metallic
Early 84 Scirocco 8v Plain ol Black
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