How hard is it to sand your front bumper?

[geisencam]

What good tools do you think I would need to sand the old paint off of my front bumper cover? It has already been re-painted once before and now the paint it starting to show some hair line cracks and the paint is easyly chiped. I no I would need some sand paper but what grit? Any advice would be great. THANKS Kevin

[Ted]

I work in a bodyshop and this is what I would do. Since your nose probably has some rock chips and stuff like that I wouldn't recommend sanding it by hand, it's going to take a long time to get them out. Instead, you'll need a palmsized orbital sander (make sure it's a good one, we used air powered ones where I work and we call them DA's if that helps any. I'd use 220grit sand paper on the DA and try sand it until you can get most of the stuff out. You might as well do the whole bumper with it since you'll be sanding with that. You might want to get some wetsand paper with some 600grit to smooth it out a little bit afterwards before you paint it also. (Note, if you are painting the cover yourself, I would advise you to take it off of the car) It would be a lot easier, so you want get overspray on the car or sand anything by mistake.

[ January 20, 2004: Message edited by: Ted ]</p>

[Loochy88]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by geisencam:
It has already been re-painted once before and now the paint it starting to show some hair line cracks and the paint is easyly chiped. <hr></blockquote>

just curious, but when it was painted were any flex agents used. your problem sounds like a common symptom that occours when the flex agents are overlooked.

[Ted]

Nah, our bumpers crack like that, kinda like they do on firebirds too. I know mine at least gets cracks because sometimes my bottom hits on roads or when i'm backing out from stress and stuff like that. It's just common for older cars though. It could be a possibility that no flex agent was used however you really don't have to wrry about that stuff too much unless it was a brand new bumper.