Harrington bumper bad welds

[azruss]

Coming out of the hardware store, it looks like the rear bumper is ready to fall off the car. Discover that the bolt bracket on the harrington ss bumper, busted off and it was only being held on by the side bolt. Another couple of bumps and it would have laying on the ground. Wire welded the bracket and burnt thru the stainless. Probably should have taken it to a TIG shop. Was too lazy to sand it all down to flat again, so got it close. Used a grinder to get the welds flat.I then sanded with 220 grit DA to get welds flush. Then sanded with 400 grit dry DA. Kept sanding with dull 400g (acts like 600g at this point. Then polished with a 3" cloth wheel on a drill press at 6000 rpm. started with a black (coarse) stick and finished with a #5 (white) polishing stick. In the shade, the polish looked good. In the sun, it showed lots of fine scratches, so it was off to #2 Meguires with a DA polisher and a foam pad. This got the fine scratches out. Finally #1 Meguires for good measure. The weld flaws were far enough under the car to not be noticable. It also gave me a chance to do a full #2 Meguires on the entire bumper off the car so i could get to everything. If you are running Harrington bumpers, you might want to give your bumpers a little tap with a soft mallet to see if you have any rattling.

[spiderdan]

Tx azruss.
I'll give mine periodic taps, just to be sure.

[So Cal Mark]

I've seen that with all of their bumpers

[fiat218]

nice repair job. i know where i am sending my bumpers to get shinnnnyyy

[dickykitch]

I have this problem on one of mine, the bracket has fallen off one of the rear sections and I've not even fitted it yet!

As it's stainless, doesn't it need electropolishing if you re-weld it?

Richard