Mounting the DS rear bumper

The restoration of my DS is almost complete.   The DS rear bumper is now back on the car and from the outside the car looks complete.   I’m really happy with how it looks.

The bumper is actually quite simple to mount.   In retrospect I should have removed it in one piece instead of disassembling it.   It would have saved me a lot of time.   The two bumper irons are bolted to the body with big rubber isolators to provide a small amount of ‘give’.   What I find odd is that the nuts are really narrow.  You need a 26mm socket but the nut is only about 2mm.  There is plenty of room for a normal sized nut that would be much easier to grip.   There are rubber covers for the exposed threads which is probably what prevented mine from rusting.   The bolts are right behind the tyres meaning they are exposed to water/mud being flicked up from the wheels.   I put a  little grease on the bolts before installing the covers.

The bumper should be mounted with the rear wings removed.   It is too easy to damage them otherwise.  I tried and put a minor scratch on one of mine.

You also need to be really careful with the rear wings once the bumpers are mounted.   There are little tabs on the DS rear bumper to stop the wing touching it, but they don’t work especially well and some rubber backing for the bumper would make sense.