ohTONYoh

Autozone and such should have the 3M body repair stuff correct? Yeah im going to go the brace route and ad the aluminum pieces.

KingTomiii

To help you out, your epoxy idea sounds good if you know how to use it.

I've fixed countless surfboards with epoxy kits and it's fantastic! The aluminum is a good idea and use non stick plastic to shape around it and mold the epoxy with and then hand sand it down

ohTONYoh

But aren't surfboards fiberglass? And my bumper is urethane plastic so i'm hoping the body filler will help it stick, probably going to use the aluminum brace with the safety wire because with my front lip, it makes the bottom pretty heavy. Plus my cars black so i'm not really worrying about the safety wire showing.

Fabrik8

Don't know, but an auto body supply place would have SEM or 3M or Fusor. Make sure you read the instructions and get whatever additional products like adhesion promoters, etc., that you may need in order for the body repair adhesive to work successfully. This is not going to be a cheap fix by the time you get everything you need, but it should work very well if executed properly.

Surfboards are fiberglass with epoxy or polyester resin. Filling dents and dings in a surfboard isn't the same as what you're doing, no. The repair epoxy might work, if it sticks to urethane and if it's flexible enough and if its rate of thermal expansion is similar to the bumper material, etc.. Else you end up with a shear bond failure and you have to start all over again from scratch.
Or you could use a product that's engineered to work with the materials that you need, like the SEM/3M/Fusor products are.

Don't go near that bumper with body filler until after the repair. You want bare plastic if it's urethane, and most of the instructions will tell you not to use any cleaning chemicals after the sanding/grinding/abrasion during surface preparation (the adhesion promoter is usually used at that point). Urethane's actually pretty easy to bond to as far as bumper plastics though. At least it's not a hard to bond plastic like TPO.

Seriously, if you want this to come out properly you need to follow the product instructions and not just do what you feel like.

ohTONYoh

Sorry i meant the 3m stuff not body filler, and thanks alot for all the info.

And come to find out, the same thing happened on the bottom slats but they have been repaired. I can see where they put the material and its strong as mess whatever it is, but then again the bottom ones don't have as big a load to carry so ill see where this goes.

Fabrik8

Is this an aftermarket bumper? I don't know that car enough to tell from looking at the picture.

ohTONYoh

No it is OEM, I will post pictures, not surprised my dumb self hasn't thought of that yet.

Fabrik8

Something else to think about while you're making repairs: you might want to add some additional mounting to the bottom of the bumper to tie it to the radiator support and take some of the loading from the lip, etc...

ohTONYoh

I was thinking that exactly before i saw this, And i also saw on another forum that he used a piece of sheet metal that he connected to the bottom of the radiator support to help support the bottom part of the bumper up.

ohTONYoh

Above middle piece. It is not missing a chunk, that it from the slat being disconnected, so the bumper is sagging.



Slat under middle piece, repaired with mystery substance.