Body to fender seals????

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Joined
Feb 20, 2020
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Location
North Georgia
My Car
1972 Mach 1 dark green
I am putting a chrome bumper on my '72, will work on the original urethane bumper in the future.  It came with the body to fender seals, a soft, gray rubbery material.  I see how they mount, pretty flimsy.   Gray rubber color looks bad, any options?  I guess the are what I have.  https://www.kentuckymustang.com/product-p/3765.htm

Makes me want to work on the original bumper right away.  Any suggestions to make this soft seals better looking?

 
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Not a lot you can do.  Paint them the same as you body color and try not to bend or flex them to keep the paint from peeling.  I saw an video on youtube a while back where some guy had dyed his.  They looked pretty good

 
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When I bought my Mach 1 it didn’t have the urethane bumper. I ended up using a chrome one. I didn’t use the seals to fender, instead I stripped the chrome, cut the ends of the bumper on top, hammered them inward to better align with the fenders so it didn’t stick out on the ends, rewelded and then painted it body color.  I then shimmed the bumper up to get the gap on the sides to match up. To me it looks better than with the seals. Just another idea. Ryan

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Yes incredible job there Ryan.  When I first read your reply I thought, what is this guy talking about, he has a urethane front bumper.  heh  I think it would take a certain skill level to get it that smooth.  I think it looks better than the actual urethane bumper, which is usually off a bit on one side or the other.  It was the same on the urethane bumper for my '68 GTO back in the day.  It fit pretty well but had a slightly different gap on one side.  I saw some of those where I swear the gap on each side was a quarter of an inch rather than fitting flush with the front fender.

 
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When I bought my Mach 1 it didn’t have the urethane bumper. I ended up using a chrome one. I didn’t use the seals to fender, instead I stripped the chrome, cut the ends of the bumper on top, hammered them inward to better align with the fenders so it didn’t stick out on the ends, rewelded and then painted it body color.  I then shimmed the bumper up to get the gap on the sides to match up. To me it looks better than with the seals. Just another idea. Ryan

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Damn fine job there. I really like that idea. Maybe something i will look into when i replace my front end. I like the look of the urethane bumper but they are very prone to cracking. And hard as heel to find in good shape. 

How did you strip the chrome? Just use a grinder and flap disc? 

 
Thanks guys for the compliments. All I did was cut the top part of the ends of the bumper at the V, heated and hammered it inwards to better get it to line up with the fender end caps then rewelded . As for stripping it I just used a grinder with a flap wheel  and ground all the chrome off, then I used a DA sander with 80 grit, epoxy primed, then Slicksand, block sanded, sealed it then painted. Ryan

 
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Nicely done @73429mach!
I think I might copy this in the future as chances of finding a urethane bumper here are near zero.

Was thinking about cutting the center and weld it back a bit behind to mimic the urethane one, but now that I see how clean this looks, not sure I'll do it.

 
Damn that is a nice job, way beyond my skills.  I will work on my urethane bumper and see if I can get her looking good, if not I may try to come up with my own fender seals.
Thanks for the kind words, it really wasn’t that hard to do, just took my time. Good luck with the urethane bumper, if you search the forum I think there are some threads on repairing and refinishing them. Ryan 

 
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