I am trying to strip my front bumper cover.
It has about 3 or 4 repaints apparently.
I am using aircraft paint stripper in a can from o'reilleys.
Works pretty good; just so many paint jobs.
Question,,,when I get past all the paint; will the spider web cracks be gone?
Or; are they in the plastic itself . If they are I'm just fighting a losing battle.
I have sanded many places down to the original plastic and it looks good.
Very slick; I will need to use adhesion promoter, i'm sure.
But some places, they seem to never end. There are many coats of paint here, and many coats of primer also. I came upon what looks like the original paint (gold) but under it was white, but it doesn't look like paint. Under that it is black/dk grey.
Looks like a rainbow.
black-redprimer-black-red primer-gold-whiteStuff-black.
I just came from the JunkYard and they got nothing.
The nose has no cracks, no tears, minor warpage,,,not bad really...
I just assumed that the cracks were just in the paint; but maybe not.
thanks mike

 

My iroc has a lot of spider web cracking in the front bumper. Body shops have told me that all the cracking is in the paint, not the bumper. Once you get through the paint it should be fine.

 

Very common issue

You tried body filler .. Or plastic repair kit ?

 

On my 4th gen I had the same spiderwebing paint your talking about. I had the car repainted. the bodyshop I used stripped the front bumper back down to urethane but the spiderwebs were still there in the urethane. They were hard to see but they were there. Body guy showed them to me by wetting the front bumper for whatever reason it made them easier to see. He painted over it all but by the time he was wet sanding and buffing after clearing the car they started to show back up. So I had him order and paint a new bumper cover. That fixed it. Maybe someone knows more than he did but he was the best in town and the only ase certified collision repair body man in town. Anyone else care to chime in?

 

it's the paint. remember the paint cant flex as far as the urethane can.
if you can still see them when the base color is gone, keep going.
iv only done a few. but never had any show back up..even after buffing and waxing.

 

It could go either way. The paint may have cracked because there is way to much material on the bumper, but from my experience spider cracks usually need to be sanded out of the plastic. If they aren't sanded out completely they'll probably come back after paint. If the cracking is way into the bumper then some serious sanding will be necessary followed by plastic repair material. Don't use body filler, it doesn't flex and isn't meant for use on plastic.

 

Yea thinking back I wouldn't use body filler also.. I thought I saw something for bumpers awhile back at paint store idk
I used some not to long ago def not flexible

but I agree Prep Is everything you can have a bad prep even a expensive paint will look like crap..you can have a awsome Prep evrn cheap paint can look amazing ..sanding till there is no cracks is the best solution depending how deep they go ..

Painting over bad prep will only amplify the bad prep.

 

You're right, they make polyester glazing putty for bumpers. Its only for very minor stuff. I have almost no experience with it but I don't think it would be good on anything this big.

 

No filling required, the cracks are so small they are hard to see. I am just afraid that they will come back to haunt me later. I sprayed a little piece with rattle-can primer and it covered it up; looks good, maybe I'm paranoid or maybe vigilant, but a paint job ain't cheap. Look how "thick" the paint is. Many paint jobs and it still came through ALL of them.

 

I know this is hard to believe; but, the picture with the red primer is "after"
I removed the first TWO layers of paint. Under is still red, gold, grey, white and finally a very strange (super-slick and smooth) black layer.
I think the funny black color is the original paint. Under the black is the actual dk-grey material. I haven't found anything under the grey,,,yet...
You know what is funny; the very outside layer did'nt look that bad. Majority of the cracks were still hidden by the latest paint job.
Both rear quarters and the hatch area were cracked also. But not because they were plastic. I had to strip the car down to the metal.
The metal had started to rust UNDER the body filler causing it to release. Apparently; they had put a very thin, skim coat of filler over the entire rear of the car and sanded it smooth. But; the bare metal wasn't prepped right and it started to rust under the filler. Made many layers of paint crack. When I purchased the car it had a sweet paint job; shortly thereafter it started cracking, and never quit.
I guess every time it cracked; they just painted over them.