Is there are professional body workers? Tipps for bumper repair.

[Alex_K]

Hi Everybody! I would like to start here a new discussion about bumpers repair. I work with professional body repair and looking for colleagues, who want to share experience in bumpers repair. First question: how do you repair a bumper cracks? what materials and technology do you use for?
Second: I've got a lot of problems with repair with metal grid, all kind of grids. After repair its holds not up for a long time. Who had similar problems? and what did you do with that?

[962porsche]

plastic repairs are all a little different . most a rips I plastics can be repaired but some plastics like TPO is harder to do a repair to .
so I could go over 100's of different ways to repair plastics but it's to much for posting on a forum .

if your getting grinding marks in metal that are coming back on you . your doing to many things wrong . starting with to coarse of a grinding disc .
if your getting sanding marks coming back that is a hole other matter and could be from many different things .

[David McLaughlin]

I've used a plastic welder for several bumpers with pretty good results. Not sure how our shop came to acquire such a thing but it came in handy for small cracks and larger tears. I also used it to repair the little tabs that break off. At first I hated the tool but then realized it was the welding sticks that came with it that I didn't like. I learned to use strips cut from scrap numbers instead.

[Alex_K]

Originally Posted by 962porsche

plastic repairs are all a little different . most a rips I plastics can be repaired but some plastics like TPO is harder to do a repair to .
so I could go over 100's of different ways to repair plastics but it's to much for posting on a forum .

if your getting grinding marks in metal that are coming back on you . your doing to many things wrong . starting with to coarse of a grinding disc .
if your getting sanding marks coming back that is a hole other matter and could be from many different things .

i know what you mean I can also write about bumpers repair a long time. Problem, that i discribe here come not just from doing somthing wrong (of course i cant say how body worker before me have done his work), but clients coming to me with this:





and i can see that work was done using some kind of grid. I would loike to sare experience here about such repairs. Did you had such repairs? How you did it?

[Alex_K]

Originally Posted by David McLaughlin

I've used a plastic welder for several bumpers with pretty good results. Not sure how our shop came to acquire such a thing but it came in handy for small cracks and larger tears. I also used it to repair the little tabs that break off. At first I hated the tool but then realized it was the welding sticks that came with it that I didn't like. I learned to use strips cut from scrap numbers instead.

I do it also so, not just with a welder, i have my personal way to work it out, i use also an electric dryer and another tools. But I guess you have it all too. In my opinion welding is best way to repair a bumper. 15 years ago i also used welding sticks or scrap numbers. But it is such a brutal and coarse material, working with it is very difficult. It's possible to repair a bumper with scrap numbers, but to be true i found a better decision.

[Alex_K]

Originally Posted by David McLaughlin

I've used a plastic welder for several bumpers with pretty good results. Not sure how our shop came to acquire such a thing but it came in handy for small cracks and larger tears. I also used it to repair the little tabs that break off. At first I hated the tool but then realized it was the welding sticks that came with it that I didn't like. I learned to use strips cut from scrap numbers instead.

I found examples of my work (bumper repair, PP):





back side:

[Alex_K]

It is a hard Infiniti FX bumper repair. It requires the repair of the empty edge. You should build up the edge right first of all. Start with the edge. Build the perimeter and fill the mould, the inner part. You should be like an artist to be able to see the mould. Make a wire mould with a whole part and create the bumper edge.