Quote:
Originally Posted by ShawnPaul
I saw a link online of a 1m look alike piece that was already a full bumper. Was wondering if you had that same one. I had considered it from the pictures I had seen online. Was your 1m look alike made for another car originally? Like was it for a m3 or something?
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Hey Shawn! Yup, the aftermarket bumper was a full bumper and was made for my car (E85). Here are the reasons why I spliced the two:
1. The aftermarket bumper does not fit correctly on the mounting brackets on each corner (the corners were completely smooth and do not have any grooves to latch onto the bumper brackets)
2. The kidney grill holes did not have any grooves to lock the grills onto so the grills would just slide out
3. There were no holes on the bottom or the side to mount to the fender liner and the skid tray/belly pan
4. There were disproportionate gaps under and around each headlight (I have to adjust my new spyder headlight because, according to my picture in the first post, they sit too far in. There is an adjustment screw/bolt on the corner that I will have to revisit sometime this weekend)
5. There were no mounting holes under the hood
6. The aftermarket bumper touched the bumper bash bar
7. The corner spots where the reflectors would be were of a different size. One was larger than the other. The reflectors did not fit either one
8. The circle for the emblem did not hold the emblem securely (a tad too big)
Since these Duraflex 1M bumpers are handmade or poured into very bad molds, they are very ill fitting. There would be way too much custom work to be done to make the aftermarket fit like the OEM bumper.
Since most the points above had to do with the top half of the bumper, I just decided to splice the top of the OEM bumper to the bottom of the aftermarket bumper. This was done by cutting both in half, attaching a metal reinforcement plate with epoxy to the back of the bumpers and then use fiber glass to fill in the front and the back.
Plastic welding could not have been used because the OEM bumper is polyurethane and the aftermarket bumper is fiber glass reinforced plastic.
Would I suggest this bumper? Absolutely! As long as you're willing to put in the work. I love the look over the Aero and M bumpers. But then again, looks are subjective.