Bumper Restoration

anyone know of any good car restoration sites?

I'm about to fit a s2 bumper to the s1 for the headlight washer upgrade and think it could do with some renovation before it gets a spray and a fitting.

Are you planning on spraying it yourself ??

hi Lez,

on the S1's I've used the plastic bumper repair filler from halfrauds to fill scrapes, and then finished the grey parts with 2 types of paint you can get from some suppliers direct - first can textured to give the same 'rough' effect, then the mid-grey top coat to blend it back to correct colour. Of course on an older faded strip this will show so respray the entire length unless it'll come up with a proprietary restorer product.

Also have welded the plastic to reasonable effect, using crude methods - cut a thin strip/section of plastic from an unseen part or old bumper to use as a filler rod, heat wood chisel till it glows red and let cool a tad, test by melting a little of the filler rod and then get to work if you're just fusing 2 bits together and the fit is good (like the little sprigs that hold the lower spoiler), you may get away with no filler rod at all and just melt and press together.

Once you've got it welded back ok and filled and smothed off, box it up and send it to Shane to spray it over with 2K for a great finish

Dave

spraying, have you seen my previous attempts.....


TBH the whole car could do with a new coat, and may be the way to go, once funds allow.

filling all the little dings its got over the years i can do fairly well, and i can spray primer very well, but i had no end of problems with the topcoat, so wont be doing it myself!

the bumper i can do, oddly enough since i have used rattle cans since being about 14 I can get very very good results from them, i even have a favourite set of nozzles for the tins and i swap them around.

Is it a painted colour coded bumper ?? You will not match the car or get the paint to stick using pressure pack paint.

The texture will be your downfall. Any repairs will stand out like dogs balls.... You'll need to sand the texture down and use some high build primer there. If they have never been painted before you need to use a plastic primer. Anyone that has used a silicon type "shiney" spray on the bumpers before you'll curse

If they are just black, you can buy pressure pack "bumper/plastic" paints that work quite well. They spray and lay down with a slight texture that tends to hide damage. I have used the black plastic paint on the door strips of my CX and they came out incredibly well (the door strips being rubber).... Hang on I'll go find a picture ...

Here we go.... This is black K&H bumper paint. It finishes to a night satin finish with a slight texture. Prior to painting the door strips looked terrible. The rear strips were several different shades of black. the reason being to make them it appears they glued 3 different widths of rubber together to create the different widths along it's length.



seeya,
Shane L.

To get the right sort of textured finish, I have heard that spraying with a glue gun followed by a top coat is an effective method.
Any comments?

but you CAN buy a can of spray that is designed to give a textured finish that you then spray a finishing coat on top of. You can get different grade of texture and also different shades of the gray finish too.

That's what I did on the doom maroon 2.0SEi a few years back as both front corners were badly scurfed and one side had a small split. I plastic-welded it using an old wood chisel and blowtorch and a sliver taken from an unseen area. Then filled the deep scars with bumper repair resin, flatted it off and then textured the grey section before finishing over in the best match mid-grey top coat. Looked fine when finished, not got access to any pics I may have taken back then tho.

rgds
Dave

I'll have to ask around about those texture coats... I've never found them. I'd suggest getting a sheet of carboard and trying different distances and types until you find one that has a similar texture. You will need to "blend" the new texture in over a decent area to try and make it invisible. You will not colour match back to the body colour without correct prep and paint though. Even then it'll be very difficult matching aged paint on the car to shiny new paint !

I wonder if I can get some for my dashboard ?? I've fixing up some cracks in my CX's dashboard... In doing so I'm filing the repaired area I'm losing the "texture" of the plastic (ie: all the little dots) in it.

I will paint it all with some vinyl paint dye when finished to try and hide any differences in colours around the repaired areas.

seeya,
Shane L.

This post has been edited by DoubleChevron on February 13, 2009 12:35 am