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Triumph TR6 - First Year For Rubber Bumperettes

Visited a restoration shop today where a guy is doing a full resto on a '73 for his wife. He is familiar with my '76 and I remarked how clean the '73 looked without rubber bumperettes and I would like a set of good, straight chrome only bumpers for mine and he said they were on the car when he got it but he took them off. I thought the first rubber bumpers came out on the '74 cars. A young guy in the shop (working on the car) then chimed in with "federal law mandated 5 mph rubber bumpers on front only in '73 and then front and rear from '74 on. I have never heard of this but did not feel like arguing with a 20 sumpin' yr old kid so I shut up. Anybody have the correct history of those bumperettes?
Cheers,
Bob
Bob Evans


Bob,
I'm with you. First installed on 74's.
Rod
Rod Nichols

I have never seen a pre 74 model with the bumper overriders and all of the documentation I have seen supports 74 as the first year. I actually own a 74 and removed them. With all of the brackets, bolts and the actual overriders I removed almost 80lbs and in my opinion the car look a great deal nicer. I would guess the owner had replaced the bumpers at some point and got a deal on the later model bumpers. Just a hunch...
DWS Smith

I'd give the young whipper snapper at the shop partial credit because he is mostly correct. There were some extensions granted but all cars produced after January of 1974 were supposed to meet the requirements and even then some of them fudged a bit. That is why you see the following for example:

73 E Types had small rubber tits on the front only, but big ones front and rear for 74

Very early production 74 model year MGBs were unchanged, later production 74 model year cars got the big black blocks and then the 74 1/2 MGB were raised up and fitted with the rubber bumpers to meet the requirements.

Very early 74 TR-6s were unchanged, later 74 TR-6s had the tits added but the left the park/turn lamps in place on the front panel and then the 74 1/2 cars had the bumper raised somewhat, had the bit tits and the lamps moved to below the bumper.
SteveP1

Thanks Guys:
However, Steve on the matter of the whipper snipper, knew about the '74 - '74 1/2 transition from bumperettes on low bumper and high park light to high bumper with integrated park/signal lights but I don't believe his assertion that a TR6 ever left the factory with rubber bumperettes on the front and a straight, plain bumper on the rear. I'm going to have to get the commission number on that TR6 to check further.
Cheers,
Bob
Bob Evans

This thread was discussed between 25/08/2011 and 26/08/2011

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