My 440 Duster rear bumper, smoothed out, what color to paint it?

[wjaholic]

I pulled my gas tank out a while back and the project just kept getting bigger and bigger. I decided to pull my rear bumper and clean it out. I have had this car for a long time and have never driven it (bought it with a blown engine). The bumper has essentially two parts, the inner "structure" which looks like it was at one time 1/8" to 3/16" steel, and the outher chrome part, which is faily soft and light weight.

I sat the bumper on a couple of saw horses and started trying to get it seperated. I did everything I could and it wasn't working. I was running out of light and time so I broke out the angle grinder. After breaking one bolt I figured it was the best bet. I gound the heads of the bolts off. I wasn't too concerned about nicking the chrome on my bumper because it was in sad shape itself. I finally got them seperated and was amazed at the amount of crap that was packed in between them.

I spent the better part of the past two weekend cleaning on just the inner structure. I wire wheeled, sand blasted, and washed it. I then coated it with a good coat of POR-15. Followed by a top coat of Rustoleum Gloss black.

With that finished I tackled the chrome part of the bumper. The more I cleaned on it the more problems I found. I couldn't put it back together the way that it was. So I started the reconstruction, I sand blasted, sand blasted, ground and sanded on it to get a base line. I hade to cut some areas out and weld in some new steel. I didn't want to go with having the bumpers re-chromed because... well... they are not in that good of shape and I can spend that money on something a little more worth while (Transmission).

So, with that layed out. I decided that I wanted to fill in the bumper bolt holes. I tracked down some 3/8-16 Grade 5s, cleaned them and fed them in from the front. I welded them from the back and ground them off. I filled in a few spots with new steel and have filled and the spots I couldn't fix with a very thin layer of body filler. Bassically filled in the pitting left under the chrome and around my welds.

Lets see if the pictures work....









Sorry about the bluryness, I am working myself crazy... 

My Question is, What color should I paint it?

This is the color the car is going to be.

[Chryco Psycho]

looks good , I think I would have cut the inner brace down to the minimum needed to hold the chrome bumper in place to lighten it though

[wjaholic]

I had considered it, lugging it around before I cut it apart I had already decided what was going to make friends with the plasma cutter. When I finally got it all apart and clean I found that mother nature had done most of the work for me. I could have spent more time on cutting on it and less time cleaning on it but....

Don't always look back on projects and wish you would have gone about them just a little bit differently?

Thanks though

[Cuda Cody]

Very nice job!  Looks real good.

[wjaholic]

I did the best I could to straigten it out, I did the best I could to fill it in, and smooth it out. It didn't turn out great, it wont win any shows but... It will no longer rust, and it is stronger than it probably has ever been. So I called it good this morning. I decided to go with the "sand blasted aluminum" look. I was hoping that it would "hide" some of the flaws, dents, dings, and all the other things that were wrong with it. When the POR-15 dried, it turned out to be super glossy and all the imperfections STOOD OUT. That was when I decided to go for a low gloss top coat.  Hopefully it will last, hopefully it wont look to bad on the car.















This was my first big bumper project? I think it could have been executed better but with the limited time and finances, I don't think it turned out too bad.

What do you guys think?