Are bumper gravel guards really necessary?

[Gibson]

I'm making the jump from an old beat up step bumper to a sport bumper on my '78 longbed and I had to buy all the brackets and whatnot too because the sport brackets and step brackets are different.

One of the things listed in the LMC cat are the "gravel guards" which I went ahead and bought, but now I'm wondering if I even really need them. Do they keep gravel from being thrown by the wheels onto the bumper or something? When I try to mount them, they interfere with the tailpan a little bit and I don't want to have to mess around with modifying them if I don't need them. Any advice appreciated!

[bigblock73]

I dont think they are truly needed, I dont have any on my '75 that went from step to sport bumper.

[Gibson]

Originally Posted by bigblock73

I dont think they are truly needed, I dont have any on my '75 that went from step to sport bumper.

Cool - And I'm assuming you haven't been attacked by any rouge gravel?

I wonder what in the world they are supposed to do?

[Gibson]

I know this is totally geeky, but after digging around I found the original patent for the concept of the "gravel deflector" patented by Chrysler in 1939. It is actually a really interesting read:

http://www.google.com/patents/US2236670

I guess it must have been enough of a problem they decided to do something about it - who knew you could patent a piece of sheet metal with two holes in it!

[Keith Seymore]

I think they are mostly to cover the frame and frame extensions (the angle bracket) from a visual standpoint.

An aesthetic closeout, so to speak.

K

[Gibson]

That is a good point - now that I'm looking, at it I think it will definitely look better on to fill that gap so I'm going to massage them a bit and get them to fit.

Thanks guys

[bucannon]

take a few pictures once its done so we can see.

I know i have seen some of these on this body style truck before, usually with matching wheel well trim etc

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by bucannon

take a few pictures once its done so we can see.

I know i have seen some of these on this body style truck before, usually with matching wheel well trim etc

The OP is talking about the closeout between the rear of the box and the bumper, on top of the frame rails (...I hope, anyway).

K

[bucannon]

Ahhh, I see. Part No.25 in that LMC catalog pic?

I like the idea of having a plate in that location. but i would want it to cover the length of the bumper. the problem I have is rocks wedging in that location when loading/unloading. when i try to close the tailgate it will pop off, so now i just hold it at 45 degrees and clear the rocks out before slaming it closed haha

[Gibson]

Yup - those are the ones. They look a little different in person than they do in the LMC cat. I'll take a pic of them before I mount the bumper and then one after it is mounted. Oddly, after I bolted everything together they lined up perfectly. Must have just been some slop in there when I fit it up the first time.

I don't think they will do anything about the gravel getting between the tailpan and gate though cause they actually slip underneath the tailpan.

[maxidyne]

were these gravel guards body color or satin black originally?

[bigblock73]

Body color I believe

[Keith Seymore]

Black, absolutely. You can see in the photos of my truck that they are black.

They were installed on the chassis line, where everything is black...



K

[RandyP]

Are you 100% sure on that? All the trucks I've had they were silver. Sort of odd that everyone would have painted them the same color like that. When the silver flakes off it is black, but I swore they were supposed to be almost like the rally wheel silver.

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by RandyP

Are you 100% sure on that? All the trucks I've had they were silver. Sort of odd that everyone would have painted them the same color like that. When the silver flakes off it is black, but I swore they were supposed to be almost like the rally wheel silver.

I was...until you said that...

(lol)

Sounds like either someone painted yours silver - or - when the silver flaked off you were seeing the black primer underneath.

Perhaps there was a model year breakpoint at some time. I know the ones on my '87 were (and are) black.

I recall the bolts were silver (cadmium) but for now I'm gonna stick with my original presupposition that they were all black. Absolutely not body color.

K

[bigblock73]

I have never owned 81+ brackets or shields, but have owned a few 73-80...and some of those came into my possession body color, not black. Were they painted by the PO, not sure...but the paint looked pretty old on some of them.

[Gibson]

Here are some pics, for anyone interested. I had to do a little bit of research when I mounted mine because I was a little unclear of how they went on, so hopefully this will help someone else out. Now that I'm looking at the pics, I need to take another looking down onto the top of the bumper, but you get the idea.

[bob_o]

Very nice. Is that one of LMC's re-pop bumpers? How's the quality?

[Gibson]

Thanks! Yep, it is an LMC repop. No complaints on the quality. I used to have a step bumper, so I had to buy the LMC sport bumper brackets too and everything lined up pretty good. I also got the LMC bumper with the round fog lights for the front. It is nice too, but I think mine has a slight twist in it (though that might be the old front brackets - I'm gonna try some shims). But yeah, overall really great for the price.

[tucsonjwt]

I did not have gravel guards when I bought my 83 C20 12 years ago, but it did have a step bumper which was probably aftermarket. When I had the dump conversion done, I had the installers move the bumper up and under the rear edge of the bed floor to stop the load from getting stuck in that crack when the load was dumped. The only problem was that the tailgate band would strike the outer edge of the step bumper when in full dump position, so I no longer have a tailgate band - will get the mounting holes filled later and have a plain bumper.

On a dump conversion, the bumper gets welded to the rear scissor arms on the dump mechanism, so the bumper moves with the bed as it goes up and down. Otherwise, the bed would hit the bumper when the dump is activated. On late model pickups the bumper can stay in place, because the bed is high enough up to clear the bumper when dumped.

I am a nonconformist.

[bob_o]

Originally Posted by Gibson

Thanks! Yep, it is an LMC repop. No complaints on the quality. I used to have a step bumper, so I had to buy the LMC sport bumper brackets too and everything lined up pretty good. I also got the LMC bumper with the round fog lights for the front. It is nice too, but I think mine has a slight twist in it (though that might be the old front brackets - I'm gonna try some shims). But yeah, overall really great for the price.

Cool, thanks!

[tucsonjwt]

Pic of my 83 dump.