Early Model Bumper Aprons

[bimmer206]

First off i apologize for the horrible picture of my car. Was taken when first purchased and now has a es valence, new lockstrip, replaced drivers side fender, painted grill and windshield wipers as well as tucked bumpers. My question has to do with the bumper apron (or whatever it's called) that sits on top the bumper. One half of mine is faded and rough the other crisp black and smooth. How can i make them both smooth and ready to paint? Or does anyone have new ones i can buy. On a side note i can't find that damn bumper tuck pictures thread, it's pissing me off. Bump for a new and improved search feature.

[ethree]

Bumper shrouds. I'd try to find some which are smooth in the junkyard because they don't seem to sand very well although I'm sure you could smooth them out with some work. Then spray with SEM trim black.

[handysmurf59]

Nice to see someone from home posting... The ones on all the cabrios are smooth and can be stripped and painted to match the car or black if you want. The front ones will fit your car. The rear ones might need a little work to fit an early ETA..

[StereoInstaller1]

Or, just sand them and use a high build flexible primer. Start off with 120 wet, go to 400 wet, then high build, then 800 wet then more high build...smooth as a babys butt at that point.

[bimmer206]

Okay and how should i go about straightening the apron. Would a heat gun make it a little more malleable? My grandparents live down in Lacey in Panorama to be exact.

[StereoInstaller1]

Straightning is something on my agenda as well. I bolted my bumpers in place when I tucked them, and since then my trim has gotten wavy.

I have a roll of 3M double sided foam tape, the good shit. I was thinking about using that, and then the heat gun to "re-form" the trim.

What is the worst that could happen, right? Trim ain't all that hard to find, amirite?

[Mossman]

Forget using vert ones on the back, they're too long and encroach on the wheel well just like plastic bumpers will, not worth the trouble to hack em up and put em back together. Up front vert ones would be perfect though, like it was mentioned they're painted and smooth so they wont have 2 mile deep chasms like the original sun dried ones

[handysmurf59]

And when you get that trim straightened out I used some stuff called "Forever Black". Sorry Obama! Anyway, I works great to re-dye that old plastic.

[cjbecker]

On mine I actually tucked my front driving board and cut the whole front of the shroud off to the corner of the driving board.