Several weeks ago I stripped down the front bumper. Main reasons were that the lights looked in need of attention, one broken lens, mismatched screws and rust on the rear earth connection between the bulbs, and the edges of some of the rubber bumper pieces were sticking out. I managed to remove everything without damage which was a surprise especially the small nuts on the rubber pieces and the two clinch nuts for the lights. I then cleaned up all the non stainless parts and gave them some paint to try to give some measure of protection. The rubber parts were treated with rubber restorer and came up very nicely.
For the lights I had a spare lens which although not perfect was good enough, a very small crack which is hard to see. The bulbs were replaced with LEDs as mentioned before. One had the original colour coded screws which disintegrated on removal, the other a mismatch of self tapping screws. I decided to replace all with stainless self tapping screws which look ok and will last.
I had been waiting for a good weather day to complete the bumper, this was it. One thing I was originally expecting was that where the metal stud is embedded in the rubber it would be badly rusted and hence expanded, hence the sticking out, but all of them were very good with little rust. The issue was actually on the stainless part of the bumper where the studs fit through. The area was slightly raised giving an uneven surface to mount the rubbers. A quick application of the press and the area was flattened and the rubbers fit pretty nicely now.
The stainless part of the bumper had some marks, so having had good success with the polishing kit I bought for the door sill covers etc, I set to on the bumper. The first pass of the procedure resulted in a not very good result with a lot of tiny scratches being obvious when viewed at a certain angle. I then had two more goes at trying to get a better finish and then ran out of enthusiasm and time, the sun was going down and it was getting cold. The end result, which is now staying, is ok, but not as good as I had hoped. I managed to get the whole thing assembled and ready to mount back on the car, I used stainless nuts, bolts and washers where I could to reduce the dreaded rust. One point I had not realised was the main bolts which hold the bumper to the mounts are M10 x 1.25 pitch. The bolts I had were a mishmash so I ordered some new ones up.
Photo shows the bumper, rubbers and lights. Bumper is after the first pass of polishing.
