Any ideas on how to fill the PONTIAC letters on my rear bumper? I'd rather fill those letters, than change my tail light center section out.

Tips on how to do this?

 

A little bondo, a little sanding, a little paint?

 

Bondo on flexible urethane? It MIGHT last me the first week...

 

I used bondo and after a year its still fine but I never painted over it. I'm going to re-do it though using this method listed in the sticky on plastic repair:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/body...swork-out.html

 

Well it's not like the rear bumper flexes much at all, and since it'd be so thin, I would think that it would be ok.

 

If you filled it with the chopped reinforced fiberglass bondo, then just gave a skim coat of regular bondo, it would hold up forever unless you got into an accident, but in that case the bumper would be destroyed anyway. But if you wanted to do it "right", you'd buy the 2 part epoxy that's specifically made for urethane bumper repairs. You'd squirt it into the letters, smooth it out the best you could, then sand it after it hardened. After you sanded your fingertips off you'd find that due to it's rubbery consistancy, it doesn't sand the same as the urethane around it, so you'll have to take it down until it's a hair low, and give it a skim coat of bondo anyway. Might as well use the fiberglass reinforced filler.

 

A SKIM coat of bondo might be OK. But, do body shops put bondo on urethane bumpers, after repairing a rip or something? I kinda doubt they do. To simply fill the letters with bondo (what? about 1/8" deep or more?) just doesn't sound good/safe to me.

I thought maybe you could use the 2 part urethane, to fill the letters, sand smooth, and repaint.

 

I just explained why that doesn't work well. That 2 part epoxy sands like rubber, so it's impossible to get it smooth enough to paint directly over. At minimum you'll need a skim coat of putty or filler unless there's a different brand of epoxy out there that's better than the stuff I use.

I filled the license plate bracket holes in the front bumper of my GTA with that epoxy crap, followed by a skim coat of filler or putty when I painted it back in 01 or 02, and it still looks perfect. Obviously if I crash into something it'll likely crack, but if I hit it hard enough for that to happen, chances are the bumper is going to get badly damaged anyway.

If you fill the letters with the chopped reinforced fiberglass filler first, that stuff will dry so incredibly strong that the bumper will not be able to flex enough to create an issue with the skim coat of bondo.

 

I used some of that epoxy once to fill a gouge in my bumper. I didn't like it, because when I applied it and sanded it, it looked absolutely perfect. After a few months, however, it shrank or something, and I could see a sort of dip (a noticeable one, too) where the repair was made.