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Had to choose between a $90 plastic bumper cover or a $250 junkyard OEM one
Took a gamble on the cheap plastic cover for a customer's 2012 Civic. Fitment was so bad I spent 3 hours shaving and heating it to get the gaps even halfway right. Has anyone else just eaten the loss and sent the cheap part back?
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alice_kim8d ago
3 hours on a Honda bumper? Dude I would've thrown that thing in the trash after hour two. That plastic must've been warped straight from the factory.
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leo6127d ago
You said "that plastic must've been warped straight from the factory" but really it's usually the brackets underneath that get bent in a fender bender, not the bumper cover itself. I've had my hands on a few of these Honda bumpers and the plastic actually holds up pretty decent, they just flex like crazy when you try to force them back into place. The real trick is getting the alignment tabs to snap back in, cause if even one is broken or bent, you're fighting it for hours. Warping from the factory is super rare, it's almost always because the car got tapped and the mounting points shifted just a little.
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the_charles7d ago
Yeah but how do you even tell if it's the mounting tabs or the brackets before you waste three hours on it? I've been in that position where you're wrestling with it and you can't figure out why nothing lines up. Is there a quick way to check the brackets first without pulling the whole bumper off? Because I'd rather know upfront if I'm fighting a bracket or a tab issue.
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