Bye Bye Broken Bumper

Ever since I got my 348 over Spider 4 years ago, the front air dam has been cracked. I have observed that it actually makes the car easier to drive because you can just go barreling into driveways, etc. thinking, "well how much worse could it get?" Anyway, I finally had time to get to repairing it so I'll have to start being much more careful. I repaired it using a fair amount of Kevlar, so there's little chance of any structural damage in the future (even if the whole car, hopefully free of occupants, drew semi-automatic assault rifle fire). Here is the tale in pictures.

1.) Not a pretty bumper. Wear all around the bottom and the paint over almost the entire bumper is cracked as well.
2.) Another view of the broken bumper.
3.) After I took the bumper off, I noticed the damage was worse than I thought.
4.) I could see daylight through the corners, which had been burned through.
5.) I got out the tools and started cutting away the bad parts (the first cut is the deepest). I discovered in some areas I was cutting though solid Bondo - this was not the first time the bumper had been repaired.
6.) A little fiberglass and Bondo work of my own to build back the shape.
7.) Several layers of Kevlar around the vunerable part of the bumper. Fiberglass over the top of it all.
8.) Some final filling to smooth everything out.
9.) After paint and clear.
10.) Another shot of the refinished bumper.
11.) The bumper after reinstallation onto the car.
12.) Another shot of the bumper on the car.
13.) Now if I can just get the sound system working again...
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Nice Dave

 

very nice. a job I would not tackle by myself.

 

Nice work. I just did a weekend repair of my bumper to fix some of the more serious cracks I've put in it. A more in depth repair (such as yours) is in the future. Do you have any photos of the mount points for the bumper? I assume they are accessed through the wheel wells. THX.

 

Excellent work. I think Ferrari made the front bumpers like egg shells on purpose. They are WAY to easy to break. I had mine beefed up so it could take more punishment. Nice job.

 

Not quite. There are 8 bolts that hold on the bumper. 4 are accessed by pulling up the trunk liner (which in my case meant taking out my stereo components and undoing about 99e+99 connections). Then you take the two front wheels off to access two bolts on each side. You can then slide the bumper forward a little bit, disconnect the fog and side marker lights, and then take the bumper completely off. It is heavy, so it makes it tricky to do by yourself - especially putting it back on. It was an interesting project.

 

They are very fragile. After the kevlar reinforcement, I feel pretty good about the structure. If I scrape it, I may damage the paint, but it will not ever crack again.