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Shop lead in Phoenix said to skip the primer on plastic bumpers, and I ate 3 come backs because of it
About 6 months ago I was helping out at a shop over in Phoenix and the lead guy there, Marcus, pulls me aside and says stop wasting time with adhesion promoter on raw plastic bumpers, just scuff it good and shoot it. He had 15 years on me so I figured he knew something I didn't. First car was a silver Camry rear cover, looked great rolling out the door, and the paint was peeling off in sheets within 3 weeks. Second one was a black F150, same deal, flaked off the corners when the guy pressure washed it at 1200 psi. Third one I actually caught it lifting at the edge before it left the lot and had to strip the whole thing back down to bare plastic. Cost me about 14 hours of free labor and probably $200 in materials just to redo jobs I should've gotten right the first time. Turned out Marcus learned the trade at a shop that only did metal work back in the 90s and never fully switched over when plastic covers took over, so his advice was 20 years out of date. Has anybody else gotten burned listening to an old timer who was great at his old job but never updated for the new stuff?
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adams.troy7d ago
peeling off in sheets within 3 weeks" sounds rough but I gotta ask, was it really just the primer? A silver Camry cover and a black F150 are two totally different plastics, and some of those aftermarket bumpers come coated in release agent that nothing sticks to no matter what you do. Marcus might've been wrong about the promoter, sure, but 3 comebacks in a row smells like something else in the chain too, like prep or the wrong reducer for the temp. I've seen guys skip promoter on bare poly and have it hold fine for years, and I've seen promoter used right and it still lift. Not saying the old timer was right, just that blaming one step for every failure is how you miss the real problem.
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