Rant: Stop using Bondo on plastic bumper cracks

Honestly, I keep seeing guys at my shop in Cleveland slathering body filler over cracked plastic bumpers like it's gonna hold. I did that once on a 2018 Civic last fall and the repair cracked again within 3 weeks. You need a plastic welding kit and some flexible panel adhesive from Fusor if you want it to last. Has anyone else had a comeback from a Bondo-only bumper repair they thought was fine?

2 comments

2 Comments

harper_singh1818d ago

Oh yeah, 'slathering body filler over cracked plastic bumpers like it's gonna hold' - that's the mantra of every DIY guy who's about to learn a hard lesson, haha. I did the same thing on my buddy's old Sentra and it looked great for about one car wash before it turned into a crack maze. Plastic welding is the only way unless you like redoing the same job for fun.

ellis.felix18d ago

Ha, yeah I read somewhere that body filler and plastic bumpers have completely different flex rates, so any flex at all just cracks everything apart. Plastic welding sounds like the real fix but I've never tried it, seems like you need a special gun and the right kind of plastic rod. Guess that's why most people just end up replacing the whole bumper eventually.