I live in Virginia and for the pass 11 years haven't had any success with finding a rear bumper assembly for my 78 Delta 88. I have contacted many salvage yards across the states to see if they would pull and ship part but they will not if i'm not pulling part myself. If anyone has any leads on this part I would greatly appreciate it.

 

If you've spent the last 11 years trying to find a bumper close enough to you to go and get or a yard that would pull it and ship it for you and have not met with success, it's time to step it up a notch, assuming you want the bumper badly enough.

You may have to find the yard nearest to you that has one that you can pull yourself and just make a day or weekend of going to get it. Yes, it's going to cost you some money. Yes, it'll cost you some time. The bottom line is, do you want a bumper or not?

In this hobby, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

 

Gotta understand as a military personnel you can't just pick-up and drive over 3 hours for a part when you feel like it. Theres a thing called "U/A" unauthorized absentee! Plus I go to school on Saturdays and alot of Salvage yards i've contacted are not even open on Sundays

 

First of all, you didn't mention that you were in the military. Thank you for your service.

Have you been in the military and on this restricted schedule for all of the 11 years you've been looking? Have you had classes on Saturdays for all of those 11 years?

Do you not ever get any time off? Never a three-day weekend?

My point is, 11 years is a damn long time to be looking for a part!

It seems that at some point that during all that time you should have been able to get away for a couple days. I find it hard to believe that military life is THAT restrictive.

I'm not saying that you should be able to leave "when you feel like it." I'm saying that, after all this time, it's time to get more formal about it, locate a site that has the part you want, and then plan to go there next week or next month or whenever you can formally schedule the time to do so.

 

Nope just been on three 6 month deployments and two 8 month deployments on ship not to include work-ups and stationed in Afghanistan on feet for 2 years.

Grant it. In the last 2 years i've come across car-parts.com where you can actually pin point where a part can be. Theirs not a Salvage Yard in the state of Virginia or Houston, Tx and south of Houston I haven't been too. I've only found two in that time span. 1 in Pasadena, Tx that was rusted out and another in NC where I drove almost 6 hours to get their and the thing was gone, even after I verified it was still their before I left!

 

So you HAVE tried to go and get one, and you've apparently just met with bad luck. Sorry to hear that. I think you're going to just have to keep at it.

I've used car-part.com to get parts, and I've had ok experiences. In many instances, a part pops up as available, you call the place, and you find that they no longer have it.

But about two years ago I got a front bumper for my '73 wagon. I'm in Ohio, and the bumper was in Minnesota. But they had it off the car and shipped it to me. The bumper was $75 and the shipping was $125, but I got the bumper.

I also just last month successfully found a rear bumper for my '02 Dakota. Like you've found, most places would not ship it. They wanted me to come and get it. Fortunately, the truck is new enough that finding a place that had a bumper near-enough to drive there wasn't too hard. I found a place about 75 miles away, drove there (called first, of course, to make sure they still had it--they had several), and bought it.

Frankly, I think many people in your situation might have given up before 11 years went by and moved on to something else. But if there's a place in your heart for this car, you want the part.

Posting your need here is a good idea, but, unfortunately, this era of these cars isn't as popular as the earlier years, and so there's fewer owners and fewer possible sources of parts. But I have to believe there's a '77 to '79 rear bumper with your name on it out there somewhere.