is it possible to turn the nose of a 76 to 71-73?

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is it possible to turn the nose of a 76 to 71-73?

Postby Ocelotzorz » Sun Mar 04, 2012 2:28 am

I just really don't like the nose on my 76 astre especially since the nose of a 71-73 looks so damn good. I defiantly want to do away with the beefy bumper and go to something smaller . What would i need?
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Re: is it possible to turn the nose of a 76 to 71-73?

Postby NVEGAR8D » Sun Mar 04, 2012 2:35 am

Hi,
For the most part, the body lines mach up. there may be a bit of modification underneath.a guy here did just that to his 76 hatchback.
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Re: is it possible to turn the nose of a 76 to 71-73?

Postby kgroombr » Sun Mar 04, 2012 1:36 pm

This is in the FAQ:

http://www.h-body.org/library/hbodyfaq/ ... shtml#6.22

There isn't much, but hopefully it will get you started right.

Ken
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Re: is it possible to turn the nose of a 76 to 71-73?

Postby Ocelotzorz » Wed Mar 21, 2012 12:56 pm

Thanks the advise, is there an issue with the fenders being different between the two generations?
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Re: is it possible to turn the nose of a 76 to 71-73?

Postby vegastre » Wed Mar 21, 2012 1:47 pm

I defiantly want to do away with the beefy bumper and go to something smaller .


I guess I need to key in here since I did the swap. Ya, the main reason I did the swap was because of the bumpers both front and rear. The government mandated 5MI impact bumpers always looked stuck on and overly bulky for the original light and airy design of the first Gen.

In my case I attained a front and rear bumper from a 72 vega. Font valence from a 73 Vega and fabricated the rear valence from scratch. A couple of scrap 72 Vega Grills and a couple of scrap Astre grills.

Simply remove the old bumper/brackets and replace with the 72 Bumper with brackets attached, measure, align where you like it best, mark, drill and bolt on. The lower valence should then bolt right up with some messaging here and there. The difficult part is coming up with a decent grill look and fit. I hashed and mulled over it for months and finally completely rebuilt the top Pontiac grill inserts to match the lower 73 grill.

The rear bumper again is a direct fit but also takes a bit of massaging and aligning. I added longer studs and modified the brackets but in the end it was a good fit. The lower valence is up to you and how you want to make one up.
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Re: is it possible to turn the nose of a 76 to 71-73?

Postby cos2482 » Sun Mar 25, 2012 12:14 am

Phil,

I believe you forgot to mention the need for the use of the four, 1973 (one model year only) front bumper brackets. The 71-72 brackets will not bring the front bumper out past the 74-77 Vega/Astre fascias.
75 GT Kammback front (Medium).JPG
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Re: is it possible to turn the nose of a 76 to 71-73?

Postby BadBowtie » Sun Mar 25, 2012 11:20 am

I wanted to do the swap myself (having a 75 vega), but after I read up more I decided against it until I can get a trashed parts car. Here is some information i had saved into a word document that best described it.

"To do this properly, everything forward of the doors really needs to be swapped out...excluding the hood. - unless you want to try to modify a 1975 fender into a 1971-1973 style fender. - I don't weld that well myself. The stock 1971-73 header panel and 71-73 lower valance will bolt onto a 1975 front end without making any modifications except a slight tweeking of the tabs at the front of the radiator support for the front fender by the headlight area...just tweek in enough to clear the fenders. The 71-73 header panel support bracket will bolt onto the 71-73 header panel and still line up on the 1975 subframe location okay. You will need all the brackets for 1971-1973 to mount up the front end parts, but they do bolt onto the stock 1975 bolt hole locations.
The 1971-1973 grill will need the side brace brackets either bolted, or welded to the 1975 Vega radiator support. (Bolt them up to the grill before mounting it to the front valance and header panel, this way you can swing them around to find a good mounting locatation before bolting them on or welding them on. The 1975 fenders dont fit with the 1971-73 header panel.
I purchased 1971-1973 style fiberglass fenders for both sides and these seem to fit fine with OEM parts. Good luck finding good 1971-73 steel front fenders in decent shape! You will need the front bumper and brackets for a 1971-1973, but everything will bolt up except the outer bumper backet to the frame under the headlight area...you will have to fabricate mounting brackets for this. The 71-73 front turn signal wiring differs slighly, as the 1975 front turn signals take a different 3 wire plug. (1971-1973 front turn signals use a two wire setup) The 1971-1973 headlights will not automatically bolt on to the 1975 radiator support panel. You will need to have the 1971-1973 style Headlight Backing Plates, as well as the 1971-73 headlight buckets and headlight rings and mounting hardware. Since the 1975 radiator support was never drilled for the headlight backing plates, you will have to locate and mount these so the adjuster screws will fit through the headlight rings before drilling the holes. Take your time with this, as a mistake may prevent the headlight assembly from looking right. You want the headlights to be centered properly, so take your time."
James

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Re: is it possible to turn the nose of a 76 to 71-73?

Postby vegastre » Mon Mar 26, 2012 11:14 am

I believe you forgot to mention the need for the use of the four, 1973 (one model year only) front bumper brackets.


Absolutely and very necessary. I tried bolting on the 72 brackets and did not work at all. Luckily I had a set of 73 brackets and tried those and that was key. The 73 front valence works best also as it is already cut out. Thank you for mentioning it. Reading over what I wrote I don't want to minimize that there is a fair amount of tweaking and measuring to get all the parts to match up and lots of ways to do other addons and design changes even to later models =)
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