Front bumper cover
 

Looking for some feedback. My existing bumper cover has cracks in the paint on the center point of the bumper cover. ( Previous owner got to close to something) One corvette "expert" has told me that a replacement bumper cover will not line up good on my car and I should refinish and repaint the existing bumper cover. The shop that is about to paint my car says that with refinishing the cracks will resurface fairly quickly and there is nothing he can do about it. SO..., recommendations please. Replacement cover or repair old and live with the cracks resurfacing. Your thoughts please. Thanks

Fixing Urethane Bumpers
 

My '82's front urethane bumper also has the same cracks in the nose.


Bought a heating iron kit for plastics including urethane to repair the cracks in the urethane material by fusing the urethane together. To fill the repaired irregular surface, use a product made by AutoMIx to fill the irregular suface with a sandable, flexible filler made for urethane. It is a two-part filler with a catalyst & it needs a special AutoMix dispenser to mix the filler prior to exiting the dispenser. The body shop should have this in their tool box arsenal as AutoMix also has OEM rated adhesives to bond roofs, door skins & quarter panels.


Plan to repair the front bumper only once....permanently.... until an idiot backs up into it again.

I would check other body shops on how they repair cracked urethane bumpers.
Seems your current shop wants to thin down & featheredge the crack and fill it, which is a shortcut with bad results as the subsurface crack will be the weakspot as the crack was not fused together. The front urethane bumper has a steel backing behind the leading edge of the bumper so it's pretty rigid and would take a lot of force to put a crack in the nose.

Hope this helps...

There are after-market companies that have the front and rear bumpers made of different materials that don't crack up like the factory stuff. Not long ago, after finding out that there were fronts and backs of better material, I posted the same question you have, and these things are hard to get perfect, takes some work.
Let the post sit a day or two, and one of the guys who have run into this and had it done one way or the other will answer your post. IMO, I'd go w/ the better material and do it right the first time. I couldn't get a new paint job and have cracks come up in a short time, I'd be sick. Like I said, w/ the better material, my understanding is that it still takes some work to flush them out w/ the fenders/quarters. In the end, it would be worth it. Good Luck, and let us know which way you go.

I put a new cover on my 74 last summer and it lined up pretty good.
If you use the old one you will probably have problems in the future with it.
I bought the flexi one for approx $300 and it took couple of hours to put it on.
They come shiny black right out of the box.

Schoon

Schoon, Did you get the front nose perfect in the couple of hours, or just put it on? Any plastic/filler to get it perfectly flush and full? I'd consider a new front, not that mine is in bad shape, I like the idea of the new/better material, but I heard from body guys I know that it's some work to get it right. Please let me know what your installation consisted of and exactly how well it came out in the end. You said, "flexi." I heard that there are hard pieces that don't flex and retain their shape. Also, I think our my '81 and the '82s are of different material than your '74, no?
And thanks 82corvetteCE, good info. Thanks in advance.

Any urethane bumper that's 30-40 years old is going to be as brittle as glass. Repair attempts will probably be short lived. The fiberglass replacements including TruFlex will require some fitting to the front clip.

Pieces of mine literally fell off while car was sitting waiting on me to finish front suspension rebuild. It first started to crack and then pieces started to just break off.

I did repair the urethane bumper on my '87 IROC-Z but its bumper was still flexible.

Hey Jim,
Like I said it went on pretty good and I didn't use any filler yet.
I will use the filler when I paint the car in the near future.
There are many bolts to deal with so you need to spray all of them with liqiud wrench about an hour or so before you start. You will also need to buy the metal frame that holds the cover onand all new bolts. If I remeber correctly it came in a separate kit from the cover.
So anyway the cover looks good but will still need a little filler here and there because the old glass on the car is not perfect either.
I will post some pictures asap.

Schoon

Hope these pictures will give you an idea of the fitting

Just a suggestion:

Anytime I work on the body panels, I replace the screws & bolts with stainless steel ones & put some wheel bearing grease on the threads so the next time I won't have to wrestle with seized screws & nuts/bolts.

Looks good. Is it a Tru-Flex?