How I made 1 pc. fiberglass rear bumper filler.

I'd like to post how I crafted a bumper filler, mostly from scratch. I also wanted to document the fact that I actually did make 90% of this thing myself. I only had help from one local surfboard shapper for about 20 hours of the 200 hours that I have into it.

First off, this is not some reworked POS. Every square inch of this, is either new or splashed off an original, then extensively reworked.

Hole locations templates were made. Two sets of very nice original fillers (and parts of) were splashed as starting points for the ends and long straight sections.


The hardest part.
The center section was first made with paper patterns, then formed with aluminun, then splashed with fiberglass.






The long strips in the pic below ended up not being used.


Fiberglass parts splashed off aluminum ones.


The bottom piece in my hand was 1/2" think and made from a surfboard fin blank. I needed it to be thick to make sure it stayed flat, and give a nice reflection when done.


Smooting and filling. Many hours.




More to follow.

love it.

Here's the finished plug that we made the mold off of. Notice the turnbuckels inside the ends.


First and second parts out of the mold.




Not bad for gellcoat.




Happy spooling.

Mike Barnard

Very nice work!

looks great

Sorry Charlie. No blem "unit" here. Plus, I'm happily married.

Mike B.

Nice work, Mike.
Those are some clean fillers and your attention to quality and detail shows in the finished pieces.

I like the "clean look", no overlapping under the lic. plate. Great job.

...and like the pix show....they really don't even need paint with that black gel coat on them...

Mike
I have to say, your a true craftsman! most of us do not have the ability to see something like this completed,
we have ideas, but you follow thru and complete your ideas.
you should be very proud of your accomplishments, over the yrs ,I've seen your attention to details, like the alternator finish, turbo cover,
and the rims!!!!!
Thanks for all you do.
I for one, really admire your contributions to the Buick community!
Thanks!
Lee

The front fiberglass fillers are coming along nicely. The fit and finish should be equal to the rears. They will also be hand layed fiberglass and have the correct groove for the headlight bezel to fit into. Final jell coat will be gloss black. First, a very nice set of originals (thanks Gary Wells) were trimmed and braced up in the correct position.





Next, molds were made off of these parts. Then, new fiberglass parts (plugs) were made from those molds. Here's a "rough" plug.








These parts are now getting cleaned up and modified into the final plugs, which the final molds will be made off of.

Sooooooon.

More to come.

Mike Barnard

Man.... it just keeps getting better and better.... thanks for all the R&D and hard work...


aaron

Seen your attention to detail through the years . . . Subscribed . . . .

Mike, these are looking awesome and great detail work as the rears..... Are they in production yet? Will they be available before the second to the third week of Sept?

As with the rears, they took longer but came out better than I expected. The fronts are going the same way. Right now it looks like we're still at least four weeks away. I'll keep everyone in the loop as we get closer.

Thanks for all the support.

Mike B.

Thank you for sharing!