Yes, folks have done that....but consider this...

You lightly tapped an immovable object and did a little damage to your
bumper, but no damage to the body of your van. If you put something
stout on your van, you will no longer absorb the energy of your
collision with your bumper, but will instead transfer the energy of
collision to the body of your vanagon.

This can mean (doesn't have to but can) you will distort the body of
your van (unibody construction) instead of distorting your bumper.

I don't know about you, but I find it a helluva lot less expensive to
replace the tin/fiberglass bumper than to replace or mend a distorted
body.

Now if someone came up with a shock absorber mount for a bumper, you'd
be better off. Haven't seen one of those for a Vanagon though.

On Wednesday, September 10, 2003, at 03:34  PM, Johnny DeVilla wrote:

> I see a lot of Vanagon's with back bumpers who aren't so pretty. When I
> got my Westy its back bumper was pretty tweaked, and this morning I
> lightly tapped a fire hydranant and tweaked it a bit more.