Hey guys,
I've got an 85 trans Am that I'm restoring, painting black and want to put the knight rider scanner on the front.


buying the kitt bumper from the states is ridiculously expensive to get to Australia so I was wondering if anyone has modified the stock bumper to fit?


It looks like it would fit uf I cut the top part of center down, but not sure if the bumper would lose structural integrity and sag.
anyone tried and succeeded?

 

No-one has tried it?


Hmmm, oh well someone has to be first...

 

Ive seen one car, think its red?, with it done.
Not a huge fan of it but its your car.

 

Here is a thread that has links to one person who has done it:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/auto...front-end.html

I am trying to find the other TA with the Ram Air hood and the turn signals molded over, but it appears that even back in 2007 I didn't know the person's username

BlackTopKing also did it:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/fabr...l-build-4.html

 

Yeah blacktopKing's is what I was going for (bumper wise...the rest looks like a hot mess to me) but it's all about what he did, not how he did it.


I'll have a go at it tomorrow and take pics on how to or how not to do it and see how it goes.
Next trick will be a DIY scanner light LOL

 

Too late to go back now...

Cut the front bit out and bent the support to use as a base for the fibreglassing.


I left the end pieces to give a bit more strength to the bumper. I'll lay firebglass matting for the base and run up those end sides.




I put a cut through the center of the metal support and used the shifting spanners to bend each side down flat, and use this as the base to lay the fibreglass matting on.

 

Small update,

This is what I've done so far:
I used some cardboard underneath to give a base, and then laid a few pieces of fibreglass matting to match up to the front angle of the bumper, and lie over the metal tabs I bent down, let it set and then used body filler to try and smooth it out, then another layer of fibreglass matting over that after it had set to build it up to the height I needed...


If I was to do it again, I would probably get a few pieces of plastic and pop rivet it to the plastic bumper and metal tabs to give a closer gap to fill along with some reinforcement, and then fibreglass it.

When I was putting the body filler on I put lights on it to help cure it faster as it's winter here, and the bumper unfortunately sagged away from the filler completely. When it cooled it went back to the original place, but I've fixed that by fibreglassing over the bumper joint now and reinforced the corners. I'll upload some more pics when I get the chance.

I know it looks pretty horrible by any standards, but it is my first time fibreglassing or doing any sort of body/panel repair or mods, so it's a learning process.

 

Look forward to see how it comes out. I thought that fiberglass did not work well with these bumpers. They would crack and pull away. If now that opens up a whole new option for bumper mods

 

Fiberglass doesn't work well, one bump and it will crack.

 

That's disappointing

On the plus side I'm not planning on bumping the bumper, given the position of fibreglassed bit, hopefully the plastic part will absorb any minimal impact without cracking the fibreglass, but we'll see. worst case scenario, it does, and I take the bumper off and try plastic welding instead, yay hobbies.

 

It may not even take a bump. The different rate of expansion between the two may crack it just from heat cycles. It may also crack just from flexing during normal driving.

Hopefully it will hold up well for you.

 

I'm hoping so, the light is still 9 weeks away so I still have a bit of time to start again if I need to... I'd really rather not, but maybe if I brace it from underneath?

 

You can use the plastic filler with aluminum mesh for reinforcement. It will flex the same as the rest of the bumper. I like the SEM plastic filler.

 

Do you think that'd work as a top layer, or would I have to cut the fibreglass out and start again?

 

You might be able to put it on top. If you make a complete shellf over the fiberglass, the fiberglass will just crack underneath.
This is polyester resin yes? There's a good chance it hasn't bonded well to the plastic and you can just break it off.
After thinking about it, I would probably just do the job with epoxy resin and glass. You can get very flexible epoxy resins and it's easier to work with than the plastic filler. You can mold the tray with wax paper. For that small area you won't have to worry about it cracking off if you give the epoxy a good rough sanded surface to bond to. You can't use mat glass with epoxy, but a couple layers of 8-10 oz glass cloth should be fine. You can use some epoxy coated plywood as a good base to mount the light to.

 

LED strip is the easiest way

 

On an Astra or Honda I'd say yes :P

But they just look low rent. If you have a transAM, and it's black, it needs the light to look proper, well I think so anyway.

 

Hate all you want but i have gotten 2 most original mod trophies at 2 different events. Plus its a hit at all the meets and shows. Best non serious 6 bucks i ever spent

 

Hahha, sorry mate, not hating on you or the idea, it's just a different look, and my missus got me the light for my birthday.

My conversion is not a KITT conversion as more of a transAM at a fancy dress party.

I can't get the KITT replica parts here in Australia and probabably wouldn't want them if I could based on the prices they want in the states, and the fact that the body has never lost it's style or edge, but the interior of KITT is very dated and apart from the voice modulator, I never liked the dash.

But to each their own, I'm just hoping mine comes out close to how I picture it in my head, and better than I think my fabricating skills(or lack thereof) will allow. :P

 

They make an adhesive (urethane adhesive?) for our bumpers. I might have tried getting an old bumper for general material and using the adhesive, reinforcement material, and use the commonly known repair techniques to attempt the mod.
Google: urethane bumper repair

I agree on fiberglass being a bad idea. -sorry.

 

That would be great, but in Australia there's no such thing as spare bumpers, especially not for chopping up to use for material.

 

You don't need a Thirdgen bumper, just another urethane one.

 

Quick Update, sanded back the fibreglass etc to see how flat I could get it.

Still needs another lay of resin to get it flat, but it's looking better than I thought it would at this stage.
The resin seems to have bonded fairly well with the plastic bumper, but time will tell.

Once I have the main section flat, I'll use the resin to bond the raised bits to the fibreglass properly and clean that all up.









As you can see, its still a bit wavy

 

A little bit closer

 

I'll sand it this afternoon and if all goes well, prime it and put it out in the sun to see if it holds its shape.

 

light turned up today

 

Ok, so.... update time

The light didn't quite clear the fins I left in place, so I chopped them off, and refilled the area with fibreglass filler and coated with resin and sanded back.


There is still a small gap where the resin hasn't properly bonded with the Polyurethane bumper material, so I found a place that sold poly urethane welding rods, and will eventually take the original piece I cut out (minus the side fins) angle back flush with the rest of the bumper, and weld the piece back in but as a flat edge, but that will be later down the line.

For the time being the "ghetto" version doesn't seem too bad for me.











It's coming along

 

So quick update:

Decided to do it the right way:
Pulled the bumper (that was fun), had to take out the lights as well, and then knocked out the fibreglassed bit to start the welding

 

Instead of the $300 odd airless welder I found a $30 attachment set for a butane soldering iron which worked exactly the same and followed the youtube video I found for PUR welding.
I think it's the first project on the car that actually went just as it should.
I taped the underneath and burred back the edges of both pieces, and then welded the cut out piece back into place but flush with the rest of the bumper.

 

For the sides where the raised section was that was cut out, there was a decent gap, so I used some of the leftover polyurethane bumper to fashion a wedge to bridge the gap.





And then repeated the process on the underside.
I put a fair bit more PUR rod on the underside to make sure it had plenty of strength.

Once I've sanded it all back and used the flexible plastic filler to smooth the area out, I'll probably put some fibreglass resin on the underside to strengthen it more, then it should be all good to finish off the painting

I'll post the next step in a few days, but I've learnt the hard way to do it the right way.

 

Glad to see it all coming together!

 

Looking good!

 

Quick update,
Haven't had much time for the car due to work stuff, but will be getting back into it this week.
Here's the pic of the bumper re-sanded and then plastic filler applied. I'll post the sanded version of the filler tomorrow.

It's looking a lot better than last time.

 

The right filler and sanding can fix anything!
don't use fiberglass reinforcement on the back, the thermal properties are too different and it may pull the repair apart. Use the plastic repair filler and aluminum mesh.

 

Ok, cool, will do.

Here's the sanded down version


Close-up version, the welding pulled the gap bits up a bit but luckily it was even on each side, so it has given it a slight rise, but the light still fits nicely. Some tiny cracks in the joins but with fill that with Acryplas mix for the final coating before painting to get the little imperfections out.

 

All done


Now it's time to paint

 

If I was to do it again, and at some point I probably will, I'd cut it about and inch further on each side, and use a flat piece of Polyurethane bumper to eliminate the raised bump, but then it'll still need to have the center angled at the join.

 

All done.
first two coats are on, 2 more to go ��

 

Not too horrible for my first paintjob.

The camera makes it look a LOT better than it is, and there were one or 2 runs near the hatch, and the bonnet needs to be redone because i didn't use the primer filler so there's a few swirl marks from the sander, but I was planning to sand between each coat anyway, and i knew i wouldn't get it perfect first go.

But I'm quite proud of myself that its come out as well as it has so far.

 

And to answer the question I first posed in the title of the thread...Yes, I have:P


www.youtube.com/crjuHLhkHDE

 

Updated the link to the vid.