TR Tinted Lights, Smoothed Bumper, and Fiberglass Fillers

I going to start work on the GN's front end. Tinted lights, smoothed bumper, fiberglass fillers, and GNX fender vents. This will take me a while since work will conflict from time to time. I'm going to do all the work myself. Hope to show the progress and steps to fitting the parts and so on. Here is one of the bumper lights and housing in primer. VHT Night Shade Tint and then clear coated.

So far so good..........can't wait to see the rest. :smile:

Removed the front bumper tonight. Removed the bumper trim.....boy there are alot of holes to weld up. Looks like I will be welding the inner bumper support to the bumper.:biggrin: If it is damaged in a wreck both will be destroyed anyway. Pictures will show why I have chosen this approach. Bolts attaching the inner support to the bumper would be a pain to do any other way. This is just an idea from a first glance. Too cold in the garage to study too much tonight.

that's gonna look sharp!

I got to get it at least in primer before Bowling Green. Header panel comes off next. Got to get it stripped down, primered, and back on so I can start fitting the bumper fillers.:biggrin:

Stripping the paint off the bumper. Wow! Lots of holes.

Check out all the holes.:biggrin:

Not a lot of how to so far. Been working on the header panel for two days. The only "how to" here is to sand your a%* off. Using a DA sander and good old hand sanding. The panel is soft!

Well. Still sanding the header panel. You have to be careful since the material is so soft. I had to use stripper(only) on the corners. Sanding them would destroy the body lines. Stripper doesn't work well in 30 degree weather. Takes twice as long.

Here is a picture of one corner. Still alot of work to go. Removing to coats of paint and two coats of primer. This thread should have been "how to" sand paint from a header panel.

Bumper is finally stripped and in primer. Now to weld up the holes and start the real "how to".

Header panel back is on the car. Took much longer to do than expected. Fixed a small crack and a few small dings. Took a while but is perfect. Now we start the welding up of the bumper holes. Fiberglass bumper fillers go on next.:biggrin:

Finally welding up the holes. Using bolts(heads cut off and welded in the holes) across the front to bolt the bumper to the inner shell.Two on each side and one in the center. More pictures tomorrow.:biggrin:

Bumper bolt from the outside.

Grinding welds. Just isn't much fun!:biggrin:

Finally some progress! This isn't a hard job for the do it yourself guy. Just time consuming. Things need so far...

1) Welder
2) Hand grinder
3) bolts nuts and washers(must cut the head off and use the threaded end to weld to the bumper to attach the inner support to the bumper itself.)
4) body filler (I used dondo and glazing putty)
5) block sander and sandpaper.
6) "TIME" for lots of grinding and sanding.

Looks great. I wish I had that much time to work on mine.

Bumper is done! Anyone can do this Just takes time. Fillers next.

I am going to guess you welded the holes in with a MIG. If so you could have bought a piece of copper pipe and flattened it out to put on the back side of the hole and filled in your hole. The weld will not adhere to the copper. The hole will fill in and there won't be near as much grinding involved.

I do maintenance in a steel mill and when we have to fill in a hole this is the easy way.

Just my two cents.

Yep a mig. I tried the copper on the first two welds. Copper stuck to the bumper and I destroyed two peices trying to the copper off the bumper. Must have been a really hot weld.:biggrin: The welds were much flatter I must be honest.