Gah! There goes my front bumper...

[ZacFields]

On the way home last night I hit a pile of snow in the middle of the road at about 40mph and it completely ripped off the middle part of my front bumper. I literally had to turn around and drive back to get it out of the road.

At first I was really pissed about it, but then I decided that it's a good opportunity for me to clean up my car. I've been bummed out at the appearance of my car for quite some time now... so at least now I can kinda start fresh with it.

I have already ordered a new front bumper. I decided it was time for something new, so I went with the Drift style front bumper. For those who are unfamiliar, here are a couple pictures:

http://www.crunderground.com/images/drift.jpg
http://www.crunderground.com/images/drift2.jpg

The choice actually was for functional purposes. The bumper I currently had, the combat/street fighter restricted the air-flow to the entire upper half of my radiator. My car had been getting hot in the summer, and I realized that this bumper actually covers about 3 inches more of my radiator than my stock one did. The drift bumper is as open as you can possibly get.

Also, I'm not messing around with regular fiberglass shit anymore. In 2006 a new type of fiberglass was introduced into the body-kit world: Flex-Fiber. Flex fiber has all the good properties of fiberglass combined with all the good properties of urethane. Here are a few pictures to illustrate my point:

http://www.crunderground.com/images/flexfibertwist.jpg
http://www.crunderground.com/images/duraflex_05s.jpg

It twists just like urethane, yet it does not have warping properties as does urethane. To make matters better, it's also only slightly more expensive than regular fiberglass and a hell of a lot cheaper than urethane.

I'm still pretty pissed because I had to spend $400 today on something that I didn't need yesterday, but I think this will look good on my car and finally I can feel better about driving it in the winter.

Zac

[DustinsDuster]

sounds awesome Zac, way to take a bad expirience and turn it in your favor.....

[ZacFields]

sounds awesome Zac, way to take a bad expirience and turn it in your favor.....

Thanks Dustin.

I'm still really into my car. I can't justify spending a bunch of unnecessary money on it anymore now that I own a home and have all these bills and whatnot, but I still enjoy doing minor things like this to my car. A stock cavalier bumper (unless I ebay-ed it) would be just as expensive anyways and would have looked stupid on my car at this point.

I'm not trying to win any car shows... just trying to clean the car up. You should see what it looks like right now. I've been driving around with a primered black front bumper for like a year now... the black was starting to peel off so you could see the green underneath it, and my half-assed bumper repair was easily visible, and the mesh on the "mouth" of the bumper was barely attached. And now it has nothing to attach to from the bottom.

We'll get 'er fixed up.

Zac

[TurboZ28]

it should flex. but when it gets cold it will shatter

[ZacFields]

^ From the research I've done, the cold won't make it any more brittle than urethane is. It's really better than urethane in almost every way, except the fact that it's not quite as flexible as urethane, but if you look at the pictures you can see it's pretty darned close, and it's not succeptible to warping even when twisted as in the pictures.

The reason they "invented" this stuff and started using it to make bumpers was to make the body kit feasible to be used on a car that is daily driven all-year-round. As it is, and as I have found out in the last 3 years, you're crazy if you're driving around with fiberglass body parts in the winter... or even in the summer.

Even the fiberglass I have on my car now is not brittle when it's cold. I hit a possum in the middle of summer a few years ago.... and seriously barely hit it at about 10-15 mph and it cracked pretty bad. Then I hit a racoon later that winter going about 45 and had the same result.

Zac

[Drifte]

hey drift is the way to go ;). lets get some shots of the car anyway. i cant remember what side skirts you have and what not.

[RandomHero]

i wanna see the CARNAGE!!!

[TbTalon94]

the bumper may twist and bend like that, but the nice shiny coats of paint won't.

[ZacFields]

^ I hope I will never be in an accident where I would have to test that hypothesis :)

I'll get some pix of the car sometime so you guys can see.

Zac

[Drifte]

theirs different paints that can handl more stress than that. I used them on polycarbonate (plastic) and bent it all over the place. its all in the prep work.

[DustinsDuster]

isnt there special paint meant for bumpers that can flex and not flake though?

[Drifte]

yeah their is some paint they say is for bumpers. I was talking about something a little different. And a tad expensive, comes in tiny aerosol cans for like $14 a can. I wish i had pics, but i dont.

[sLoWnStEaDy]

yeah, that flex fiber stuff is pretty sweet. The body kit i ordered for my RX7 is made of that. I also got the drift kit...

Anyways there are some videos on youtube (IIRC) that shows the quality and flexablity.durability of the kits. They twist it just like in the pics, beat it with a 5lb hammer, have a guy jump all over it and etc etc...

[ZacFields]

The owner of the place I ordered the bumper returned an email to me a couple days ago. He mentioned in the email (among answering my other questions) that Flex-Fiber is actually more durable than the urethane bumper that came on my car.

And the thing that definitely puts flex fiber over the top is the fact that it is repairable like fiberglass. Urethane, 9 times out of 10 just has to be replaced.

Zac

[Drifte]

pics zac pics! i can chop it onto the front of the car if ya want.

[ZacFields]

I'm going to get a picture of tha ravaged bumper tomorrow.

It really doesn't look that bad because I broke some more off of it to even it out. I stopped by Kelley's Auto-Body today and I'm bringing the bumper over to them tomorrow to get an estimate done for the paint and mount, but i'm not going to put the bumper on until at least April-May because I want to make sure the paint has time to set real good and not be damaged by all the sand and salt in the roads, plus I want to make sure we're done with snow before I mount it.

Along those lines, Matt (RandomHero) are you available tomorrow (Tuesday) at all? If so I could definitely use some help getting that bumper around. I have to meet the freight guy somewhere, then I gotta bring it out to Kelley's to get an estimate. If not that's cooll because I think it will fit in my car, but if you're bored give me a call tonight and leave me a message if you wanna help out tomorrow.

Zac

[JJ240]

You should just go without a bumper...you have the absolute worst luck of anyone I have ever known when it comes to bumpers. Just FYI flex fiber has been around alot longer than 2006, it just hit the lower end of the market lately. Ecklers (corvette company) and some other high dollar suppliers have been providing flex fiber body parts for a long time, so its tried and tested technology. If you ever need any repair materials check ecklers out. They have flex resin and all the things you need to repair defects/damage.