68 Front Bumper on 69 Lemans
 

I recently obtained a nice 68 chrome lemans bumper with grills and want to put it on my 69 Lemans. Is it a direct swap or are different mounts required? The car has a 69 Gto fiberglass front valance already.

direct swap for non-hideaways.

Probably the most tasteful upgrade in PMD schnazz possibilities

Yea I am a big fan of the 68 bumper over the 69

Yeah, I still can't believe somebody at a PMD board/design meeting said "You know what Bob, that new larger monstrosity of a bumper really looks better, I say we go with it!" :confused:

Looks like Toucan Sam's beak. Seems like back in the 60s and 70s the design teams just had to go ahead and change something every year.

When you think about it, I bet the 69 Lemans had about the most robust front bumper ever put on a GM A body. With some creative bracing to the top of the bumper you could blast through Sheriff Rosko's road blocks all day :)

The 69 chrome bumper is greatest looking bumper of all time!

Really?! :confused:

Agree with coonhunter. Pinnacle of 60’s era chrome bumpers.

At least there are people out there who might want my 69 beak lol

:hooray:

I'd say that it's about one year beyond the pinnacle...That's about as good as you can make it look. From that angle, which hides the 'droop snoot', it looks almost as good as a '68 bumper.

https://img123.s3.amazonaws.com/2018...ebf17dd657.jpg

Despite owning two 69 LeMans' myself I concur with most that the 68 chrome nose is much more attractive (not surprisingly since the 68 chrome beak is dimensionally the same as the beautiful 68-69 GTO Endura bumper.

I suspect the reason for the 69 restyle (apart from the annual tweaking common then) was that the sales department wanted to make the car look more "substantial". It also mimicked the look of the previous year full-size cars (forgetting that I think the 68 full-size beak was pretty Edsel like fuggly) to give the illusion of the car being bigger.

If you compare a 68 LeMans to say a Cutlass or a Chevelle it is a smaller looking car which is a testament to great styling if you like a sporty look but the average midsize buyer was perhaps preferring a car that looked more like a full-size. One man's gold is another mans garbage.

I do like the 68 bumper and I appreciate the similarity to the beautiful gto endura. However the 69 is just a variation on a successful design theme. It also has the more attractive black and silver grille option not available with the 68 chrome bumper. Here’s a 3/4 profile highlighting that big beautiful nose.

Is that the factory late production darker grills ?

Both my cars have the more common earlier silver grey grills but I prefer those later ones.

Yes these are the original black grilles. Black plastic all through with painted silver highlights. May 69 build. I also have a light silver and darker grey silver grilles bought before I knew there were 3 different colors. Had a hard time finding a black replacement for one side.

My cars were built in December and February and both have the early three color (black in headlamp surrounds) silver grilles.

I have one NOS dark grille (forget which side and one decent used one but the condition difference would make them look funny if both went on the same car.

I am definitely going to black out the grill and also add yellow high beams. I think those look sweet

I like 'em both. '69 version gives a little more differentiation from GTO.

My opinion...68 is so much better!

Same question. Can I put a 68 front bumper on my 69. Would I need to use 68 brackets too?

68 bumper will fit (69 frame brackets have slots for both 68 and 69 bumpers) however the 69 LeMans valance will look awful with a 68 bumper because the valance is too low leaving a big ugly gap under the 68 bumper. You could run a 68 GTO LeMans valance or a 69 GTO valance.

I've read a few past threads on this and it seems that the bumpers and the upper bumper brackets interchange directly but the lower bumper brackets don't interchang. So you will need a pair of 68 lower brackets as well. According to sever all past threads on the subject

what do you mean by "lower brackets"? I'm not in front of a diagram but I believe there are only two frame brackets (left and right).

Do you mean the horizontal bumper re-enforcement's? If so it would make sense that the upper would interchange between 68-69 but that the lower wouldn't.

A bit off topic.
Just came across this on CL .... is it me, or does this Endura have chrome bumper mounts?
Or are these the mounts used on an Endura without Hideaways?

My Endura has the big clunky squared off mounts .... were the Endura mounts different between 68 and 69?

https://hudsonvalley.craigslist.org/...099258171.html

http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...1&d=1587925077

There were two types of mounts (frame to bumper mounting brackets), one was for chrome bumpers as well as non-hideaway endura bumpers. The other ones were just for hideaway cars and they are a bulkier welded assembly type design.

I must admit I don't know for sure. I'm also looking to put a 68 bumper on a 69 and refered to threads and replies I came across when I did a search on this topic. I've contacted people who have them for sale who say there are upper and lower ones.

Here is the mounting schematics for chrome and endura (except with Hidaway) bumpers.. the frame brackets interchange.

The endura bumper is one piece but both the 68 and 69 chrome bumpers had bolt on upper and lower horizontal reinforcements. I would think the upper 68 and 69 reinforcements would interchange but logically the lower one must be quite different between the two years.

Here is the schematic of the endura bumper when equipped with hideaway lights. Note the very different frame to bumper brackets.

Oops

Still confused
 

So your first set of pictures show a 69 set up chroma and endura w/o hidaways. Do you or anybody have a diagram of a 68 chrome assembly?

Ill be sure to post what I come across when I start the swap

Here is why the 68 bumper needs the 69 valance. This car is a 69 with a 68 bumper, the 69 valance is much to small for the smaller 68 bumper. It doesn’t help that this guy put the parking lights on backwards.

A 69 GTO valance should look nice also, just not the 69 Tempest-LeMans valance.

I finally did the swap and wanted to share how awesome it looks. I was wanting to eventually put a fiberglass GTO front bumper on but this looks so good I'm not sure if I even want to! I did have to do some modifications to make it fit. I used the 69 lower bumper support bracket and head light mounts which I believe was most of my issues. It is definitely not a perfect fit with the gaps but my car isn't perfect so it fits.

Very nice, clean looking car!

I did the same swap on my 69 Lemans. Haven't done the GTO valance yet but have one. I want to do a forced air thru the park lamp openings to the carb when I get to it. I also have made a custom modified set of grills for it. The 68 looks much nicer than the 69 IMO.