Eventually I had a piece that looked like it would fit was good to go.
Before I’d begin welding everything up there were some other holes that I figured I’d weld instead of fiberglass. These held the US Spec bumper in place and passed wires through the chassis to the parking lights.
When welding on thin body metal it’s critical to take your time and tack weld everything because if you put too much heat into the body metal it will distort and that’s a whole different issue you don’t want to deal with.
Not pretty but it doesn’t need to be, I’ll be adding bondo over these spots to fix any imperfections.
I then moved onto tacking in it all in place.
As you can see, some areas have zero gap while others are worse. That’s the job of an inexperienced body man!
The fiberglass helped fix those gaps though.
Bondo time = I hate my life. The main reason being is that it takes so much time to make everything look perfect. I’m too impatient for it!
I forgot to mention that I always use 3M Bondo for body jobs and repairs because simply put its the best consumer based product on the market. The formula is always consistent and lays on smooth every time. The Small Dent Repair dries super fast and is already premixed so it’s great as a final touch up to fix any imperfections.
Great post! Thanks for putting this online, all the other tutorials are so outdated that the pics are all gone.
Thanks for going through the effort to show all these steps. I’m getting ready to do my own conversion so I’m sure I’ll be referencing your photos along the way.
where do you live? will do similar bumper repair on my e28?!
We’re in the Toronto area.
And the repair is simpler than you think. Just takes a lot of time and patience!