How To Repair Front Bumper License Plate Bolt Holes

My new i3 came preinstalled with the front license plate bracket. I wasn't too happy well-nigh that, so I looked into means to make full upwards the holes fabricated past the four cocky-borer screws. There seems to be two camps on how to exercise this:

1. Fill upwards the holes with Bondo or your favorite plastic filler and paint
2. Utilize a body-colored plastic plug to fill the hole

I ended up going the Bondo route, but I did experiment with painting some plastic plugs. I used this Bondo kit. Hither's my process:

Bumper with the subclass removed. Notation the screws caused the surrounding material to not bad up. Utilize a razor to shave off these parts to brand edges of the holes affluent with the body.

Mask up the area well. I exercise my own touch-up and detailing, and stand past the philosophy that the less factory pigment you touch the meliorate. I've seen some tutorials that sand and patch the surrounding ane-2 inches around the damage, but I think it's overkill here. Make clean and fill up up the holes per package instructions. In one case dry, I used a razor to fifty-fifty out the filler to keep it flush with the panel.

Mask a larger footprint for priming, to avoid getting the stuff on a console (my mistake here). And then sand with 380 dust sandpaper. I skipped some of the coarse grit stuff. Prime number the holes per bundle instructions. My mistake here was being impatient and non allowing extra time to dry before sanding. I gave it the minimum xxx minutes before sanding even and concluded up taking some of the primer off.

Time to paint. Use your favorite touch up paint or matched spray pigment. I used OEM BMW touch on up along with some touch up sticks. Touch up method I used is similar to that of Ammo NYC'south. Permit to dry (I let it go overnight) and moisture sand with yard grit sandpaper to even and polish. I repeated this with another 2 coats.

Apply articulate coat. Let to dry (I permit it go overnight) and moisture sand with thousand grit sandpaper to even and smoothen. I repeated this with an additional coat.

Once everything is dry and ready for the final touch. Wet sand with 2500 dust sandpaper to go out the deep marring from the chiliad grit. Compound and polish away with your buffer.

It's not perfect. Y'all can definitely run into there was some work washed here upwardly close. I rushed the priming and drying procedure and that caused some issues in the terminal production. Merely from a three-five feet away it looks perfect. The flat white paint helps likewise.

For the tabs, I followed the aforementioned process on some Hillman #881201 tabs I bought from Lowes. They turned out amend than I thought. I think the cardinal is to put down plenty paint such that the surface tension of the liquid will naturally create a polish layer of pigment or articulate coat. Having the surface horizontal and letting gravity do some of the piece of work helps too .

Source: https://bmwi.bimmerpost.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1784937

Posted by: freedmanwandoothe.blogspot.com

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