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I attacked my front bar with a hacksaw yesterday, I enjoyed it waaayyy too much :alien: , chopped out the centre section of the stock series 1 bar to...errr...maximize airflow to the cooler (yeh that's it)...and as an added bonus I can actually see the cooler now. :P

Has anyone else done this themselves and if so how did you go about tidying up the ends that are left near the indicators?

I've just got 100/mph tape around the holes at the moment, doesn't look completely ugly, better than nothing, but I'd like a nicer finish.

Any suggestions would be great.

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If you kept the other pieces you chopped off, try and cut pieces from those to (almost) block the holes. If you need to use part of the bend, try using a heat gun to straighten it up.

Next put it in place, and use fiber glass on the inside of the bumber so you dont see it, and bog the bits up on the visible parts with fiber glass resin.

Then send it as flat as you can, then spray it.

I did this for a hole in a bumper once that occured from an accident, and it came out pretty good.

rob77,

Mine looks pretty much exactly like yours in the avatar, I've also relocated the plate to the same position.

The only difference is I've covered the cross-sectioned holes with gaffa tape, neatly but it's still just tape. I don't have a digicam though so it'll take ages (if ever) for me to post a pic.

Zahos,

Thanks for that, sounds like a plan, now all I need is something that resembles dexterous hand-eye co-ordination. :spank:

If you had seen the mess I made hacking that section out you wouldn't be advising me to touch a heat gun, you'd also understand why I hid it beneath all that tape. :uh-huh:

I did the same thing, but i took the bumper and the cut-offs to a "plastic welder" to cover/seal the holes. It came perfect!:) The only way to tell it has been repaired is by taking the bumper off and looking at it from the other side. :uh-huh:

This is the clearest shot i have so far:

ahh I see, the M-spec goes lower, has bigger vents at the bottom where as the stocky (like mine and rob77's avatar) just has a fairly narrow gap running along the bottom...and the sides on the stock bar curl under more, more rounded look.

The newly enlarged hole in the stock bar isnt going to be a nice square shape is it? atleast not without a more significant amount of work. Still, just to get those holes trimmed and capped would help the looks alot i think.

there is a plastic welder in malaga who is very friendly, now i cant remember the name but maybe someone who drives on malaga drive has seen it, off reid highway onto malaga drive about 1km up on the left, anyways he was very good for when i needed stuff plastic welded.

Jon,

it may have passed compliance under the old SEVS law, but may not be the same case under the new one. It's far more strict than the old one and harder for backyard compliancer to do something a bit dodgy.

  Quote
Originally posted by zanda

So you guys are all basically content to cut out the front intrusion bar?

q: if you get yellowed, how do you put that back?

That's why i sealed off the cuts, to look as though it is meant to be like that. Firstly a cop may not jerry to the modification and i probably get done for some other BS, secondly the road worthy tester wouldn't know about it. The mesh inside the square also acts as a support, so the bumper is not flimsy.

The plastic welder charge me about $160, that also included priming and sanding the middle section ready for painting. Unfortunately, while sanding back the rest of the bumper we found some impurities in the paint work. So the bumper had to be sanded right back and then high filled and primed to produce a decent job. The paint was matched very well, as could be seen by the mirrors (they were done at the same time), but the bumper did not come out perfect due to the undercoat. More layers might have solved this, but the car had to be ready for Summer Nats 16.

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