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How do I remove flaking clearcoat on bumpers?

gstein

New CEG'er
Joined
Dec 14, 2007
Messages
22
Well, I finally got around to registering, perhaps now I will have an opportunity to give back. Anyhow, I have a black '96 Duratech GL which I have had a love/hate relationship with for the past 10 years (love the car, despise the manufacturer). I am going to be replacing it in 6 months or so but, in the meantime, I am attempting to spiff it up for little or no money so I'm not driving the village eyesore. This car has lived in Florida since birth and has experienced a lot of sun, so the paint has had a bit of abuse. A little polish and wax mixed with elbow grease makes the paint look new, but the clear coat on the bumpers and door guards (plastic parts) is badly yellowed and flaking off. I have seen a number of Contours with the same disease so I don't think my problem is unique. I plan to carefully sand the remaining clearcoat off, then rub out the paint and spray on some clearcoat but I am concerned that I might sand all the way through the paint making a repaint of the bumpers necessary. I am curious if anybody has found an easier way to remove the old clearcoat from the bumpers without damaging the paint underneath? I can easily scratch it off with my fingernail so I suspect that the clearcoat isn't adhering particularly well. Any thoughts would be sincerely appreciated.
 
sanding is the only way to go.

If you lack the confidence in your abilities, proper training or experience at all, I suggest you find a respectable independent body shop and take it their.
 
sanding is the only way to go.

If you lack the confidence in your abilities, proper training or experience at all, I suggest you find a respectable independent body shop and take it their.

bingo.

sanding is not hard work, it just takes a LONG time, get yourself a LOT of sanding pads and a nice hand power sander and go to town on that bumper. I did the same thing, my bumper was flaking too, so I went around to a bunch of independent shops and got quotes on what it would cost to paint if I did the sanding, one shop told me the best price, and I told them I would drop it off in a week, and spent every day after work sanding the piss out of that bumper, it came out really good, I highly suggest though, spending a LOT of time on every part of the bumper, I didn't spend as much time on the two sides of the bumper closer to the fender, and I got a little bit of an orange peel effect, but its not very noticeable.
 
I can tell you from working in my dads shop that almsot without fail, every time a customer does his/her own work to save money prior to painting, we'll have to go back and correct their mistakes. And guess what, you'll get charged for it too.

It shouldn't take forever to sand a bumper. I'll admit to this. When I repainted my car last year, I too spent a decent amount of time on my bumper to get everything sanded smooth and just so. Maybe 2 days worth but in my defense, I haven't done any body work in 9 years at that time.
When I thought I had it perfect I asked my dads opinion on it and was quite proud of my meticulous work. He rubbed his hand across it, shot me a "WTF are you wasting my time for on this crap" look, yanked the sander from my hand and in 10 seconds had all of my hard work obliterated and finished properly. 40 years experience just can't be matched.



One more thing to note about these bumpers. If you do go through the paint and dig into the plastic, you'll only create more headaches for yourself because those tiny fiber are short of impossible to smooth out. It can be done but requires more work than needed.
 
I have the same unsightly peeling clearcoat blemish on my bumper :mad: I guess it wil lstay for now. Not interested in a full on bumper repaint.
 
The car has a number of problems (engine wiring harness problem, precats, etc), so it really isn't worth putting a lot of money into cosmetics since I am just going to drive it for a few months then use it for trade in material. I was just going to see if I could spend a few hours cleaning up the bumpers then hose them down with clearcoat using my hvlp sprayer, or maybe just a spraycan. The clearcoat is so poorly adhered that my intuition tells me there has to be an easy way to scrape it off. I did try using a coarse rubbing compound on a section of the door bumper strip and it ground through the clear coat very quickly but didn't take off much of the base coat so that might be one possibility. I think I will do some tests on an inconspicuous spot in a week or so to see if there is a lazy ... err... easier way to remove the old clearcoat. If I come up with an easy way to do it I will post it. Thanks and later, George.
 
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