How To Fiberglass - Making And Modifying Your Own Bumper

First you would surf around the web looking for inspiration. You need to have an idea of how the final project is going to look like.

Ok now you have a general idea of how it’s going look. What I did was remove some of the original plastic leaving a big hole in the center of the bumper, this way I was able to create my own grill.

After you have prepared your bumper it’s time to hot-glue green floral foam bricks to the existing bumper. (Green floral bricks is the kind that people use to make flower buckets in)

Now to the messy fun part: designing your new bumper.

Take a rasp and start sculpting your bumper, you can really quickly shape the foam. Now you’ll have a chance to see the piece that you visualized in your mind. (Hopefully)

The main drawback of the foam blocks is that they are not very flexible, so you will end up with a lot of gaps between the blocks. But don’t worry we have a solution for that.

It’s time to bring out the duct-tape. This will protect the foam from resin and also from absorbing any moist, and finally it will close all the small gaps between the foam blocks. Make sure to cover all the foam with duct-tape, we don’t want any of the foam to start melting. Now it’s time to start preparing the fiberglass part.

Firstly I would cut my fiberglass mats into smaller parts to make it easy to get into all the corners and curves on your new bumper.

Things you need:

Polyester resin

MEKP hardener

Fiberglass cloth of various weights

Good rubber gloves

Cheap stiff-bristled brushes

A mixing bucket and measuring spoon

Acetone (to clean up with)

Paint sticks (both for mixing and for propping up fiberglass)

Before you start to apply the fiberglass, brush a small bit of resin onto the bumper. This will help the fiberglass to stick to the bumper. It will make your progress a lot easier.

Ok now you’re ready to apply your fiberglass cloth. Find a good starting position, place your cloth and start to add resin on top of the cloth. You should apply enough resin to moist the entire cloth, this is tricky. You don’t want too much and again not too little, you have to take it slow and learn on the way.

Lay it piece by piece, just make them overlap a little to strengthen the finished product. Continue until you have at least three layers.

Well the only thing that’s left now is to let it harden up. Read the instructions on the resin for your hardening time. I like to leave it for about 24 hours, just to make sure.

Make sure to visit my How To Fiberglass blog.


By Jesper Pedersen