North Coast Cab

I'm setting my my race car for the installation of a turbo front bumper. The fit is good, but I'm not sure about the bumper shocks. Has anyone modified them or created a bumper bar to utilize them?

V2Rocket

turbo bumper shocks are shorter.

im sure if you really wanted to you could modify them by cutting and rewelding but it wouldnt really be smart considering the availability of genuine ones

North Coast Cab

Ah, I looke din Pet and saw the shocks, along with the bumper reinforcement pices I do not have.

Mike C.

Front fenders need modification (unless you are swapping in turbo fenders). There is a thread or two where the mods have been discussed. The part numbers for the headlight cover and nose panel are different too from what I've read.

V2Rocket

the nose panel and headlight covers are differently shaped than those on an NA; they are more rounded to match the turbo nose and the nose panel is longer on a turbo

Kburke

can you show how you made it fit. I have wanted to change my bumper forever now but from everything that I have read the bumper will not fit with out minor/major work. The S2 bumper looks nice to

V2Rocket

the S2 and turbo bumpers, fenders, headlight covers, nose panels, bumpershocks, bumper bar, etc are identical.

the easiest way to put the turbo look onto your NA is to get all those parts listed above and swap them onto your NA. they will all bolt on so long as they are installed in a set. NA fenders will not work with a turbo/S2 nose unless you trim the front corner which has been done by several people (search for it).

if you trim your NA fenders, you can install the turbo bumper and bumper cover but it will not fit right (big gap between bumper and nose panel) and it will look odd.

Kburke

It always looks awkward?

V2Rocket

if its not done completely then yes, unless you go to the efforts of trying to fill the big gap between panels. even then it will look odd because the turbo nose is more rounded whereas the NA nose is flatter

tifosiman

There are a bunch of posts on this (primarily by me where I rattle off all of the parts and the process like a broken record instead of just saying "search" ).

To convert your car to a turbo/S2 front you need the following from a a donor turbo/S2 car:

Bumper Cover
Bumper reinforcement (aluminum) and shocks
Foglights and turnsignals (side marker lights are the same)
Header Panel (the part with the badge attached to it)
Foglight Covers
Black plastic headlight surrounds
Batwing (the black plastic under-tray)
Tow eye hook
Fenders*

The Fenders are optional. If you have a bodyman to do the work for you or you are fairly adept at bodywork, modifying the 944 fenders is pretty straight-forward. Less than 2 square inches of metal in the shape of a little triangle needs to be trimmed from the fender in the front corner, and you need to leave a little extra on there to roll and form a factory looking lip. This can be done by using the bumper cover as a template for the cut. Personally the best way to do this is take some thin 2ply cardboard, cut it to match the profile of the bumper cover in the corner, then lay it over the fender and trace to get the area of fender to cut off. Remember to leave 1/4 to 1/3 inch to roll over into a lip. You'll need a dremel, hammer, a couple dollys, and a file. If you aren't repainting the car right away you can touch up the area where the paint cracks when you form the lip.

You need the header panel, headlight covers, and black plastic headlight surrounds because the 944 pieces are flatter in the front than the 951/S2 parts. They do not match the curvature of the bumper.

Its important to mention that the wiring for the foglights and turnsignals is different on the Turbo/S2 cars compared to the 944. Both in colour and connectors. Get the wiring as far back as you can, past the connectors and into the engine bay if possible. Then you can splice further back and wrap with black cloth tape to look "factory". If don't get the wiring past the connectors and are left with just the lights and wiring to the connectors, the best thing to do is to purchase some trailer hitch connectors from the local auto-parts store and wire it up this way. Put a little extra wire in there so that when you remove the nose in the future for any reason, you can slide it forward and off and then unplug the lights.


Hope this helps.


KEYWORDS FOR FUTURE SEARCH: turbo bumper conversion, 951 bumper conversion, S2 bumper, bumper swap, turbo front end, turbo bumper parts list.

GloriaRedStang

Here's my 84 n/a with a turbo front cover put on by a PO. I'd grade it a B as far as fit and finish. I think he swapped out the fenders, but I'm not exactly sure what all was done. It's far from perfect, but I'm happy with it.

V2Rocket

that is a good picture to explain off of.

notice how the headlights dont sit flush with the nose panel? those headlights are the stock NA ones and are a different shape than the turbo.

and it appears that the passenger fender may have been a modified NA fender

Marcquito

Those a definitely N/A fenders and headlight covers.

North Coast Cab

Ok, mine is actually a turbo bumper cover and it mates up to the NA without any fender modifications.
However, the bumper shocks are too long. I am interested in the measurewd differences between the NA shocks and the turbo shocks if any has those measurements.

nh7cy

Mates up to the n/a without any fender modifications? That's pretty much unheard of unless 1.) you actually have an aftermarket bumper or 2.) you're like me your car had some front end fender damage from it's p.o, and came out of the body shop with turbo/s2 fenders.

Turbo bumper shocks are about 2-3 inches shorter. By the way, I'm all for doing the job just for the sake of doing it, but you'll probably spend more money modifying your n/a shocks than you would spend on just buying a set of used turbo/s2 shocks off Craigslist for $20.