I've just had the rear of my 88 vette resprayed. Paint is good but the bumper is not aligned properly.



Did the bumper shrink while in the paint oven? Is that possible?

The left hand side is down about 5mm



and the right side is 2-3mm out.

It would be easy to say send it back to the paintshop, but I got a good paint job done for a fair price, they had a lot of trouble getting the bumper off, ALL the studs sheared off and had to be fixed, and the painter told me they spent 8 hours putting the bumper etc back on. They stuck to their quote and I think I've had a fair go.

So I'm inclined to fix this myself- if it's possible?

Can I stretch the Urethane back to where it was?

If so, how?

 

Over the years the bumper on my 87 has also shrunk so you are not alone. It started getting wavy and after I took it off it did want to go back. Not sure what you can do about it.

 

I just went out and looked at mine (an 87 coupe) which I took off the other night in preparation for going to paint. Those studs are fixed in place in the bumper and are about an eighth inch in diameter(10mm nuts). What did they replace the broken studs with? The hole they fit through is about 1/4 - 3/8 inch in diameter. The holes on the main body are also about a quarter to three eighths inch diameter. That implies that there is some room to flex the bumper cover inboard and outboard but not very much. I suppose that it is possible that in replacing the studs, if they did not get them close to where they were originally, they wouldn't have enough "slop" in the body holes to move the bumper cover to where it needs to be. And, I suppose that if they offset the stud in its hole in the wrong direction that they would use up all the limited tolerance that the hole in the body provides for adjustment. I think your only options are to loosene it back up and see if it can be flexed and then tightened. Baring that, I'd say the placement of the studs is the issue. Search for "rear bumper removal" and there are a bunch of posts on how to get it off. I'd say that you wouldn't need to go beyond loosening it and moving it to determine if that will do it. If not, removal is probably required. Hope this is helpful.

Having said all that, if it were me, I'd take it back and tell them to fix it! Presumably, when they estimated the job, they flat rated the bumper R & R but the flat rates don't accont for brute force in removing the nuts. In my case, i shot all of them with WD40 and let them sit for 24 hours before I even attempted to put a wrench on them. No borken studs!

 

was it chemically stripped? The replacement 90 bumper I put on my car lined up perfectly and I havent even got all the bolts in.

 

The rear bumper is easy to adjust. I spent about 3 hours on mine when I did the '91+ bumper swap on my '87.

You have to lossen the bolts on the sides and top, get the sides bolted in one bolt at a time while your tugging and pressing until the body lines up ok. Then the top gets bolted in.

Not too bad.

The bumper could have shrunk a hair when they shot his car, assuming they baked it afterwards. I've always painted the bumpers off the car (while painting the car) then assembled it afterwards. You get better coverage.

-- Joe

 

A friend had this issue with his 87. He made a round block of wood contoured to match the inside of the bumper with a long thin handle on it, loosened the nuts, pushed the bumper out and tightened the nuts one at a time. Looks great. If you do this, I would remove the spare tire, the antenna and anything else in the way to gain more access. Paitence is the key with this and a hoist would certainly help too. A good painter would have used a flex agent for the bumper, if they did so, the paint shouldn't be affected when pushing the bumper out.

Good luck and post a pic when completed.

 

Thanks TommyL - that sounds like a good plan- I'll get to it in the next couple of weeks and post the result.