Bumpers Question

Hi Guys,

Forgive my ignorance here - my 84 Flareside has always had what appears to be a "normal" bumper.  Meaning it has steps, a hitch, etc.  It didn't come with the traditional Flareside bumper with the license plate bracket, etc.

My question is, when looking on Google for bumpers, they say "Styleside only" or "Flareside Only" sometimes.  It seems the holes for mounting the bumper are different along with the brackets, but if my truck never came with the "skinny" bumper, can I assume a Styleside bumper will work?  

Or do I have something even more unique?  

 I believe the frame is the same as a styleside short bed. that would mean that the bumper and brackets will bolt right up.
my 93 flareside has a flareside only bumper but its due to being shorter than the styleside. not certain about whether the mounting brackets are different or not.
I often remove the step bumper and install the f100 slim type bumper on custom trucks and it requires a different bracket setup and those are really hard to find.

Hopefully Cory will jump in here on this one, he'll know for sure.

I'm hardly an expert, but posting this in case it helps. I'm dealing with a bumper swap myself, in my case an '81 bumper conversion to a step style I picked up in a junkyard. The donor bumper was in much better condition than mine, and I liked the utility of it.

 

Mine may not be identical to yours, but all the 80-87 rear bumpers I've seen so far were attached with six bolts. There's a pair of brackets forming a "Y" that comes off the rear frame rail. The other forks of each "Y" got a bolt apiece through the back of the bumper. The inner forks had two bolts sideways into a support bracket inside the bumper itself.

This inner attachment is where I've found the differences in the bumpers I looked at. You can see the issue in mine - the outer bolts mated perfectly but the inner bolts have a 1.25" gap between the mounting bracket and the bumper itself. In my case I plan to fill this with a stout bushing but YMMV.

Hope the pics help a little, anyway... Sorry they're so dark, I took them quickly.

Thanks much for the pictures, these will be a help to compare things!  Not too dark at all.

A lot of Bullnose Flaresides were sold new with rear step bumpers. They were aftermarket bumpers installed by the dealers. They were basically just a narrowed version of the Styleside step bumpers. These bumpers were installed on A LOT of Flaresides back in the day, so they're at least somewhat common.






Something you'll notice with them is that they vary quite a bit. They're often just a little bit different from truck to truck. There were probably a few different manufacturers of them that were sold in different regions. Texas trucks probably had different bumpers than New England trucks, etc.

Ford sold 3 different bumpers for the pickups, and all three of them took different mounting brackets. That's why they say the individual bumpers only fit certain style trucks. The bumpers don't come with mounting brackets, and the sellers are assuming that you'll be re-using your existing brackets. So if you're switching from one style of bumper to another, you'll also have to change the mounting brackets as well. That's the hard part of course, because although there are still companies making new replacement bumpers, nobody is making the brackets for them. (Ron/Reamer on here makes brackets for the Flareside skinny bumpers).

As far as the frames go, I can only speak about half tons, but as far as rear bumper mounting goes, the F150 frames were the same from 1980-1996. The holes are in the same spots, and they even use the same bolts, all the way through for all 17 years. PS: Gary has a section on rear bumpers in the Documentation.

This was my 1980 F150 4x4. I swapped in a 1995 F150 frame, and the 1980 bumper brackets and bumper bolted up on the '95 frame exactly the same as on the '80.

Cory has it covered.
Also note around this time some pick up trucks did not come with rear bumpers from the factory so it was a dealer install. I think state laws were just coming in that a rear bumper was needed and why the factory was just starting to install them.

Yes the flare side bumpers are shorter that the style side bumpers.
Other that being wider the style side will fit a flare side using the brackets that fit the bumper, frames are all the same.

My brother said the flare he got some of the parts from out in Cali. had a step bumper and side it did not stick out the sides? I have never seen one that fit a flare side, he though it could have been from a Chevy S10? Guess he had never seen one before either?

BTW the thin flare bumper did not have the plate bolted to it.
There was a bracket that bolted to the left side of the rear sill. You will see 2 holes where it bolted that the plate bolted to.

Dave ----

Thanks everyone for the answers!  I'll measure the width of what I have now and see where it lines up to what's on the market.  Besides that, seems like it'll bolt up if I understand your answers properly.

I hope everyone is enjoying their Super Bowl Sunday