Oh no...dinged my ARB Bumper! (1 Viewer)

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.

Joined
Aug 9, 2007
Threads
72
Messages
873
Location
Tucson, AZ
Screwed the pooch. Cut the wheel a hair too soon backing out of the garage, and scratched the crap out of the driver side rail on stucco. Through the powder coat into the metal. I did not wish to learn a new skill, but had to. I tapped my local Ace employee who does muscle car restorations. He provided the piece I didn't know; the scratch filler. I used the two-part epoxy putty from Bondo.

20210902_092000_resized.jpg

Wet sanded down.
20210902_093408_resized.jpg
 
Last edited:
Masked the heck out of things. Had to go the full length of the tube because blending would be terrible if not impossible.

Primed.
20210902_124056_resized.jpg

Had to wait overnight for cool temps to continue to the black coats. Summertime here is often too hot and too low humidity by mid-day. Near perfect early in the morning. Also no wind or bugs.
20210903_080311_resized.jpg


Since the vehicle is now for show rather than serious utility, I lightly buffed this bumper to a light sheen rather than let it remain factory. The black paint is a statin. The clearcoat is a gloss for wheels. When it cures out for about a week, I'll make the refinished area match the rest of the bumper by very lightly sanding by hand with a 3" diameter 3000 grit wet pad.
 
Shot three light black coats 10 minutes apart, then a medium wet coat. I let that cure, then used the same intervals for the clearcoat coats (two light coats, one medium wet).

Not bad. Smooth as a baby's tookus now. Sorry...I couldn't get the camera to focus this tight, but I positioned a white bounce card so that you can see the surface reflection is now minus the wounds.
20210903_081737_resized_1.jpg

Here are the products used.
20210902_150850_resized.jpg


All's well that ends well. If I had nailed the body paint, it would have been off to the body shop. Dodged a bullet. Learned my lesson. :confused:
 
Last edited:
That looks spectacular.

Here's another option for those who use the bumper hard:
I had originally ordered my ARB bumper from Australia with a matching 033 Toyota white paint to match the color of my cruiser exactly. It looked swell (though a bit feminine).
Over the years I used it hard, wrapping winch cable over it and pushing things and getting stone chips and it didn't look so good anymore and was starting to rust in places.
Since paint was obviously too fragile for how I was using my bumper - I decided to hot dip galvanize the sucker. It looked scary (in a good way) after that and never got a spec of rust on it for the next 15 years.
Here's a picture of if it with some white water staining after many years right on the beach with salt water spray.

image.jpeg
 
That looks spectacular.

Here's another option for those who use the bumper hard:
I had originally ordered my ARB bumper from Australia with a matching 033 Toyota white paint to match the color of my cruiser exactly. It looked swell (though a bit feminine).
Over the years I used it hard, wrapping winch cable over it and pushing things and getting stone chips and it didn't look so good anymore and was starting to rust in places.
Since paint was obviously too fragile for how I was using my bumper - I decided to hot dip galvanize the sucker. It looked scary (in a good way) after that and never got a spec of rust on it for the next 15 years.
Here's a picture of if it with some white water staining after many years right on the beach with salt water spray.

View attachment 2776455
Good idea. I've never seen that done before.
 
I dinged mine as well. It saved the truck on a trail.

I’ll weld it up and fix it one day. Thankfully I’ve got enough metallurgists as friends to fix it right.

5224C3D8-11FF-48E0-BFDA-78519C12A2C5.jpeg


DAE61ED0-38AB-4486-B65A-CF1DB35B584F.jpeg
 
Ooof!
Yeah as strong as these bumpers look, the steel is very bendable. It's soft steel. I intentionally bent in the front flat protective trim that surrounds the upright using only vise grips - so a strap hooked to the bumper hook wouldn't chafe, and it was easy to bend. Really soft
 
All three examples here look excellent in their own ways
 
All's well that ends well. If I had nailed the body paint, it would have been off to the body shop. Dodged a bullet. Learned my lesson. :confused:
FYI, with your touch and appears to be talent, should you ‘nail the body paint’, that’s exactly how you fix it. Maybe different products but the process is the same. I’d say you are good enough to fix you own dings.
Well done.
 
FYI, with your touch and appears to be talent, should you ‘nail the body paint’, that’s exactly how you fix it. Maybe different products but the process is the same. I’d say you are good enough to fix you own dings.
Well done.
Thank you for the kind words. When you've made about every mistake at least twice in life, you eventually learn a little something, I suppose.

It looks like the new surface is going to have just a touch of orange peel. After it cures for a week or so, I'll smooth that out with McGuire's D300 Correction Compound...which I'll have to do by hand rather than buffer. Of course it will be screaming glossy then...which I'll knock down with the 3000 grit wet sand pad...by hand. Surface texture and luster will both then match the rest of the bumper.
 
Last edited:
Ooof!
Yeah as strong as these bumpers look, the steel is very bendable. It's soft steel. I intentionally bent in the front flat protective trim that surrounds the upright using only vise grips - so a strap hooked to the bumper hook wouldn't chafe, and it was easy to bend. Really soft

I think that’s on purpose. I will take a ductile steel over something hardened any day for this application. I’d rather the bumper move than it transfer that energy into the frame.
 
Finished up the repair this morning. Wet sanded with 3000 grit to smooth out the clearcoat orange peel. Took about 10 minutes. Then used the correction compound to bring out the shine. This happens super fast. Have to have a light, even touch, and only spend about 10-15 seconds so that it doesn't turn hyper glossy...which wouldn't match the rest of the bumper. Elapsed time this morning: 30 minutes.

Wet sanded.
20210915_070427_resized.jpg

3000 Grit Wet Pad
20210915_070601_resized.jpg

Shine Returned
20210915_071827_resized.jpg

C'est Fini
20210915_072315_resized.jpg

C'est Fini
 
Last edited:
Finished up the repair this morning. Wet sanded with 3000 grit to smooth out the clearcoat orange peel. Took about 10 minutes. The used the correction compound to bring out the shine. This happens super fast. Have to have a light, even touch, and only spend about 10-15 seconds so that it doesn't turn hyper glossy...which wouldn't match the rest of the bumper. Elapsed time this morning: 30 minutes.

Wet sanded.
View attachment 2786892
3000 Grit Wet Pad
View attachment 2786893
Shine Returned
View attachment 2786894
C'est Fini
View attachment 2786895
C'est Fini
That looks great!
 
You're the first person who ever set out to remove orange peel from ARB bumper paint. ;) Great job!
 
You're the first person who ever set out to remove orange peel from ARB bumper paint. ;) Great job!
Thank you. The factory ARB powder coat has very low orange peel, and I only see it on the top of the main bumper. That cannot be polished out; just too tough. It can be made more shiny, but not perfectly smooth. My re-paint to repair is another story. That clearcoat is always going to orange peel somewhat. It's a two edged sword; easy to finish, but not as tough.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom