Thanks for the additional advice Frank. There might eventually come a day when I'll see about messing with the grille, but if it happens, it won't be soon. It only bothers me in principle, that a body shop would do such shoddy work reassembling a car as that shop did with this one.
The fit of the bumper is a different situation. It's positioning is now about half-way between where it was and where it ideally should be. For at least the short term, I'm going to leave it alone until I've attended to a variety of other items, but I'll get around to fussing with it again one of these days. Your point about cracking fiberglass is noted. In fact, the 'glass was cracked by the body shop where the fender is sandwiched between the bumper and brace. The fussing I've done with the fit of the bumper has allowed those cracks to close up, and they are no longer visible (they were below the bumper, and thus not noticeable under normal circumstances anyway). The used bumper the shop installed on this car appeared to have been somewhat tweaked, and it's mounting surface at that fender interface wasn't co-planar with the fender, which led to the cracks when the bolt was tightened. This, plus the rust on the underside of that used bumper, is what led me to try a new, made in USA repro bumper from Paragon.
I had read a while ago that the rear bumper brackets were thicker on '63s, but was not aware that such is also the case with the front bumpers. I'll have to research and measure to figure out whether the brackets that are on the front of this car now are the thick or the thin pieces. Do you happen to know the thicknesses of the four front brackets?
Live well,
SJW
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