One of the things that has bothered me since the beginning was the condition of the bumper covers. They have been repainted in their past, and unfortunately they haven’t lasted very well. Both front and back covers had hairline cracks running through them. I’ve used Dings And Dents/The Great Auto Paint for work on other cars in the past, and spoke with them shortly after picking the car up. Now its was time to fix the bumpers.
One of the first things I noticed on tear down was that the Styrofoam shock absorbers were missing. That means that any time someone even slightly bumped into the cover it could allow it to flex and crack the paint. This could be part of the problem. I tried our friends at Lithia Toyota first but of course these are long since discontinued. I lucked into a car showing up at the pick and pull and was able to grab some used absorbers from that unfortunate car.
I was able to replace some of the bumper hardware (left) but not all of it.
The remaining items were treated to a good cleaning. I used a combination of LA’s Totally Awesome cleaner and an Ultrasonic Cleaner to get the dirt and loose rust off of the hardware.
Once I got the bumpers back and reinstalled I took the entire car into the shop so they could do the final buff on them. Color match is awesome and the only way I could be happier is if I had them touch up a few more parts!
