Quote:
Originally Posted by r4gs
dekaliber, ur front bumper looks great after being refinished. question - mine's at the bodyshop right now to be refinished as well (due to a disappointing clear coat peeling issue) and i was advised NOT to mold the front reflectors smooth. the manager expressed genuine concern that he'd be worried about cracking from the large surface area that's required to be molded. he mentioned that the reflectors themselves shouldn't be used for molding as they're possibly detachable and can easily ruin the paint layers that way, and consequently bondo over the entire gaping hole would make that susceptible to the slightest bumper flex, and hence cracking.
i saved 75% of the cost and got all four reflectors painted instead for $36 total. seemed like a great deal? the refinishing itself is going to set me back quite a bit, but i'm in the process of getting the houston dealership to foot part of the outlay.
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I got some pushback from the bodyshop as well, but it's pretty sturdy as far as I could tell. Now, I didn't try flexing the hell out of it or anything, but you do have to handle it a bit getting it mounted and everything, and it stood up without any issues.
What I think my bodyshop did is cut a patch of plastic and bondo-ed it behind the bumper for support. If it was only bondo, I could definitely see it being pretty fragile. You could probably use the reflectors and do the same thing, but you'd have to bondo behind it thoroughly so that they wouldn't pop out.
I thought about just painting the reflectors but I wasn't sure it was going to be invisible enough. After seeing how great this came out, I'm glad I didn't. I badly wanted the totally clean European bumper, and this was a roundabout way of doing it.