Rear bumper shock/L series

Numbers of people have removed the shocks for aftermarket bumpers or the smaller euro bumperettes that the car deserves. I'd expect you should be able to find a pair kicking around collecting dust on someone's shelf, mine went in the trash.

Thanks for all the input Marlin. I'm thinking of doing the drilling and shear pin myself. I remember from the car we had in 73 the rear bumper was a long way from the body.

I'll try to remember to look at mine tomorrow.
for the last 30 years I used them as the mounting point for the rotiseria and they seemed solid

I always thought they were filled with rubber or the like to meet the US mandated 5 mph impact test? Are they completely hollow?

http://www.panterapartsusa.com...l.cgi?prod_id=23007B

Later euro cars that had no need to be loaded up with over regulated parts had a simple bracket, thus;
http://www.panterapartsusa.com...l.cgi?prod_id=23007C

Julian

Mike, I got curious about them myself. So since I'd made a set of lightweight aluminum tube supports to replace the shocks for fiberglas L bumpers, I sawed one apart a few years ago.
They are real hydraulic dampers made by Fichtel & Sachs, a well known European damper manufacturer, with oil inside and a stack of deflectable damper washers. While they were apparently designed to work more than once under light impacts (those are 2-mph bumpers!) a sharp enough blow seems to fail the seal and let shock oil leak out. After that, you have an easily moveable bumper mount with about 1" of travel. They are not rebuildable. I wrote a small article a few years back, with photos, in the POCA Newsletter.

is there a spring in there to push it back out once it gets hit?