Got my Crites Fiberglass front bumper

[Jeff73Mach1]

What I was refering to is not the brace, but the urethane bumper is molded around another piece of metal that is not removable. On mine it is the consistency of stale cheetos. I see no point in repairing urethane that is molded onto rusted out metal.

So the game plan is clean up the inner brace with a wire wheel, rust treatment and paint it (done)

Mount it to the car (done)

Cut the inner mounts out of the Crites fiberglass bumper (done)

and then mount the Crites cover onto the steel brace supported by the aluminum brackets once all paint and body work is done to it.

I believe I am going to use PL construction adhesive to glue the fiberglass cover onto the steel support. It is commonly used in boat building and is extremely strong when cured.

Anyway, here are a couple teaser photos

 

[Jeff73Mach1]

Did a little work tonight, even though I feel a little under the weather. Aster test fitting the fiberglass bumper cover to the factory inner brace I went ahead and glued up the front inner bumper brace and the fiberglass bumper cover with PL Construction adhesive, which is a polyurethane adhesive that is extremely strong and dries not quite brittle hard. I think it will be perfect and used it on the stringers of my fiberglass hulled ski boat 4 years ago and it has been perfect.

My bumper has adjustment available side to side, up and down and to a lesser extent to the angle and fore and aft position. I used pencils to maintain the spacing along with painters tape on each side. In the morning it will be solidified and by the end of work tomorrow it will require a chisel to separate the parts. Once it is solid I will remove it from the brackets, run a bead on the underside to prevent the fiberglass from flexing or warping and allow it to dry. then I can begin to do a little minor body work to the fiberglass to get it ready for paint.

All in all the weight savings with this method over the factory bumper and mounts is about 80 pounds. Personally I think crites should ditch putting their mounts in the shells and recommend this method to everybody, but then again I am incredibly modest and lack confidence. lol

 

[JimNiki]

very good job you do there. I also have one of them german highly calibrated spacer pencils which you are using! hehe

 

[Jeff73Mach1]

I have two boys ages 11 and 12 1/2 (Not sure what that is in metric lol) so pencils are easy to find. You can barely tell in the picture, but the front grill is a 71-72 part, that I had to trim the bottom lip off of to get the clearance to use the 73 bumper. Silly putty works for checking valve clearance when assembling an engine too. lol

 

[Jeff73Mach1]

Bumper is ready for the final couple of coats of paint. I'm stuck at the computer till 4 and need to go get a can of satin black spray paint. The crites molds really should be fine tuned and given a better coat of gelcoat. The bumper is pretty wavy.

 

[73vertproject]

Wow. Great work, Jeff! ::goodjob::

 

[Jeff73Mach1]

No it isn't. But sanded black is definitely a good way to hide waves. I cleaned it up a little bit,sanded out some runs in the glass, filled a couple of major pits and put a heavy coat of filler primer on it. 400 grit, 2 coats of black acrylic enamel overnight drying, wet sanded down over my lunch time with 600 grit and then scotchbrited. I think it will look decent, but it will not look professional. a parking lot bump will break fiberglass, and no matter how careful I am, sooner or later it will happen and I just don't feel I can justify a couple more hours of bodywork or professional paint on a fiberglass part. If I ever repaint my car, I would try and get it painted and also get a second urethane bumper reworked and painted as a back up.

The Crites part is a nice fiberglass part for a dragster or race car, but it is far from a nice part for a street car. I am way to uninterested to try and skim coat and block sand it to get rid of the waves.

 

[Jeff73Mach1]

Paint is drying, I have one corner that kept checking and I sanded it all the way back down. There was something in the primer from the layer that came on it. Hopefully I got it to blend as I ran out of paint.

On the plus side I finally conquered a long standing problem with installing the brackets. When the old brackets were removed one bolt snapped off in the frame rail and the rear of the mount and on the other side the nut on the inside of the frame rail broke loose necessitating removal with a cutting wheel. So both my rear mounting locations were compromised. I drilled new 1/2 holes in the mounts and frame and as there is no access to the back side without cutting into the frame, I simply cut off the head of two 1/2 bolts and welded them in . I drilled the mounts out to 5/8ths to give me some adjustment and cleaned and painted and put it together. Worked like a charm.

While I had the valence off I went ahead and remounted the chin spoiler correctly. too. Now I have to decide if I am going to fix the holes or not.

New Aluminum High volume water pump is here, Radiator is due here Tuesday, I would be smart to leave the bumper off until I am done. We'll see if I have that much restraint.

 

[marks73]

A lot of good work Jeff.

 

[Jeff73Mach1]

Well this thread is about done. I have a front bumper again, and I'll let you be the judge as to how it looks.

 

[Tnfastbk]

::goodjob:: as long as you are happy with it thats all that matters

 

[Jeff73Mach1]

I give myself a solid "B" on the work. I'll always know a few thing no one else will see, but . . . I am learning that sometimes that is okay.

 

[mach71351c]

Congrats on a nice job.