With: Patrick Smith
Restorers of 1972 LeMans, LeMans Sports, GT and GTO cars often have to source a bunch of parts unless they're fortunate enough to start with a clean survivor. For years, finding parts for these especially body and trim was difficult. Only now are we seeing a groundswell of aftermarket assistance and this is largely due to the astronomical priced we're witnessing for clean cars online.
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| Note the turquoise, black and white decal with part #. This is an older replacement part likely made during 1972-73 era for body shop repairs. |
This time out we look over a prized piece; a New Old Stock 1970-72 rear bumper assembly. This part is in possession of Bill McWhorter who owns a gorgeous and rare 1972 LeMans Sport 455 HO ragtop in Monarch Yellow. Bill is setting out to restore his survivor car and this assembly is one of the parts going on! Check it out; the part number is on a decal on the inside rear of bumper. Note the turquoise, black and white colors. A late 1970s early 1980s era parts piece. The pn here is 484946 2008.
Seems kind of long, doesn't it? Well that's because there's also another bunch of numbers afterwards on the second row. It isn't a part number as such. The actual pn is 4844946. It was filed under Group 7.831 in the GM parts catalog. This piece will work for 1971 and 1972 models as well.
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| The black inner bracket has no part number and comes as part of the rear bumper. |
Let's look at what this assembly contains; notice there are fixtures inside the bumper itself. These are tail lamp assembly brackets for bolting the tail lamps in place. It's a metal piece in low gloss black and has six holes for attaching the bracket inside the bumper. In the catalog it doesn't have a part number but is described and shown as lamp to rear bumper mounting bracket. The wiring harness for the tail lamp has 4 separate bulb holders which twist in place in the plastic lens housing.
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| A side by side comparo by Bill showing his original with the replacement NOS unit. |
A word or two on original assembly line rear bumpers and the parts replacement pieces. On assembly line bumpers you will find a date code stamping behind the licence plate frame area. Reproduction bumpers don't have a date code and neither will GM parts replacement bumpers. Have a look at this original factory rear bumper assembly off of Bill's car. Note the stamping beside the left rear side of fuel filler neck entry. It says "1JA4". Bill's car was assembled January 27th 1971. This bumper was stamped January 4th 1971.
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| Note date code stamped on this original factory bumper. Jan 4th 1971.pic:Bill McWhorter |
Looking at Bill's replacement bumper which left the storage warehouse in 1984 shows no date code anywhere. Notice the tooling marks under the chrome flashing? The stamping was worn out and close to the end of its normal life span. Squeezing an extra year out of some parts pushed their quality control luck a bit! Fortunately this area isn't visible when the bumper is installed. We will return soon with another cool Y Code info extravaganza.
*(C) 2022 by PHS Media. PHS 1972 Y Code Registry.
