[68ragtop]

I want to finish up the details on my 68's front Bumper. The bumper is painted body color & I know from all of you guys that they never had overspray on the backside originally, so I found a gray paint that is pretty close to the color of the endura materials, so I am going to spray that on the backside of the bumper to make it look like raw endura.

But, what do you think I should do with the exposed steel part of the bumper? the very bottom is exposed underneath, where it attaches & of course in front of the core support.

Should I just paint that primer black, or do you think those were a bare steel color? Really not sure what to do with that & don't want it to stand out too much.

Opinions?

[gtohurstjudge]

My 69 GTO bumper was bare steel beyond the endura material. A bare steel gray color would
be the most correct for the Endura frame.

[68ragtop]

Is that what you did with yours? Do you have any pictures by chance?

[gtohurstjudge]

Yes, but I don't have any pics of it. It's really not a big deal what you do
because when the car is all together you really don't see the metal frame. Also
there should be body color overspray where the metal frame and endura material come together. You really can't see beyond the overspray area on the metal with the bumper and filler panel installed on the car.

[68ragtop]

Originally Posted by gtohurstjudge

Yes, but I don't have any pics of it. It's really not a big deal what you do
because when the car is all together you really don't see the metal frame. Also
there should be body color overspray where the metal frame and endura material come together. You really can't see beyond the overspray area on the metal with the bumper and filler panel installed on the car.

It was my understanding that the bumpers came from the supplier prepainted & there was really no overspray because of the way the paint was applied during fabrication. Somewhere I read the way that were painted & it seemed borderline unbelievable the way it was done originally.

Not trying to take the thread a different direction, just curious about the overspray thoughts.

[gtohurstjudge]

I first repainted my endura bumper in 1972, and I recall there being some
overspray on the metal framework, but I've slept since then so perhaps I am mistaken. If you are satisfied from your research that there shouldn't be overspray
then go ahead and mask it off. I doubt anybody has an original unrefinished endura bumper to look at since the paint failed immediately on all of them, so
I think it is a matter of conjecture.

[Greg Reid]

Here are a couple of pics I stole from the GTO Forum. The poster says this is an original un-touched bumper. I know when I took mine off, it appeared to be a mix of some of the endura rubber, black and rust. Truthfully though, I did not pay much attention. NO ONE is going to see it unless they disassemble your car...and if they do that, I doubt very seriously that they will care what color the bare metal or bare endura is behind your bumper.

[Greg Reid]

Here's another pic sent to me by forum member Dennis Viscusi. Don't know the history of it. Appears that there is no overspray and all metal appears to have a coat of surface rust indicating that it was probably left bare-

[68ragtop]

The crazy thing is, the bumper I restored still had original Aleutian (sp?) blue on it, cracked & chipped up, but never repainted. This was just a few years ago and at that time I could care less & never thought I would be worrying about these details. I have restored many cars over the years, & in more recent years I have turned it into more of an art rather than getting the car done on a time line. So, I have been paying more attention to details than I probably should. I painted my car almost 1 year ago & I am still working on small stuff, Haven't even bolted the body back on the frame yet. Yes, I am a putz, but its what I enjoy. There are a bunch of things I have deviated from how the factory did things to clean up the look, but still like to know how everything was done originally & then decide what to do.

So that being said, I found a paint that looks dang close to bare steel. Painting my drive shaft with it this weekend. Yes, Still looks like paint up close as only steel looks like steel, but its the right color/ tone & gloss. I think if I paint the exposed areas of the bumper to look bare it will probably look wrong just because I'll bet those bumpers were rusty in one week

That picture also has me wondering about the core support "bump" brackets. I noticed mine had a type of zink coating on them when I cleaned them up.

[Greg Reid]

I understand what you're saying. It IS a hobby after all and whatever you enjoy about it is what you should be doing, IMO.

[68ragtop]

An interesting development today

about 16 years ago I bought a 68 bumper on eBay that was in storage for many years before that. Unfortunately when I got it, its turned out to be very badly bent & I could't use it. I stashed into storage & honestly forgot all about it until yesterday afternoon. Today, I took a ride to get it out of storage & to my surprise, it's very well preserved. Yes, still bent but it retains a lot of original paint & assembly markings.

While there are frame areas rusting, it is mostly covered in black primer or paint. There is also an interesting blob of blue paint & this was applied over the black, but it goes under the endura. There is also a "Z" or an "N" on that blue painted area.

Interestingly, I did see some overspray of Green in a couple spots. But, I have no idea if this bumper was ever repainted or not. It really didn't look to be, but I can't say for sure.

Some pretty cool info anyway

.

[Greg Reid]

Well, there ya go.

[68ragtop]

So looking at the pictures I posted, what do you make of the greenish color that is on the endura? Its obvious the material is a blackish color. but in general it looks very grayish-green from what appears to be overspray & primer. I'm going to paint the exposed steel part to a satin, low gloss black, but Not sure what to do with the edura backside. Mine has a lot of overspray on it now including clearcoat.

Also, do you guys think the core support bump brackets should be painted black, or silver coated? Mine had light rust on them just like the ones in Greg's pictures.

Sorry for beating this to death. Just hard to re-do later & really easy to do right now

[gtohurstjudge]

My brackets were painted black from the factory. My bumper had overspray on it from the factory similar to your pictures, but no black paint on the
metal frame of the bumper. that is not surprising as there wasn't much uniformity
in procedures back then, plus yours is a 68 and mine is a 69.

[bob6258]

I was working at PMD Pontiac during those years and I can assure everyone we did paint Endura bumpers along with the hood, fenders and front valances on the Pontiac assembly line.

[68ragtop]

Originally Posted by bob6258

I was working at PMD Pontiac during those years and I can assure everyone we did paint Endura bumpers along with the hood, fenders and front valances on the Pontiac assembly line.

Thats pretty cool! Do you recall how the bumpers came? Where they in primer, or did they come in raw endura to the plant? When I restored my bumper, the gray primer that was on the raw endura was crazy tough & even flexible to some degree. It was not easy to get off. Its so odd how the bumper I pictured above has areas with what looks like overspray not endura, but then not a spec on the black prime red frame right next to it, but then there are clear areas of overspray.

Do you know if the number markings in yellow would happen before, or after paint was applied? Seems like this bumpers has an awful lot of number identifiers on it 4 or 5 of them for sure.

[dstryr]

I have a couple original bumpers that I can look at on Saturday. One was hit on an 'almost' brand new car and the endura has a small tear in the side where it meet the fender(pass or driver side, I don't recall). Other than the tear and scuff it is a nearly perfect original bumper.

[68ragtop]

Originally Posted by dstryr

I have a couple original bumpers that I can look at on Saturday. One was hit on an 'almost' brand new car and the endura has a small tear in the side where it meet the fender(pass or driver side, I don't recall). Other than the tear and scuff it is a nearly perfect original bumper.

Post some pictures if you can. Would be interesting to see how it compares to the one I posted above. Thanks!

[dstryr]

Originally Posted by 68ragtop

Post some pictures if you can. Would be interesting to see how it compares to the one I posted above. Thanks!

I was up to do some work on my car but couldn't get in the storage unit where the bumper is stored unfortunately. I'll be back up in the next few weeks I think and will try again.

[68ragtop]

One thing I found interesting as I was getting some other parts out of the storage building this weekend is that this bumper in the pictures above, There is some very light green on the backside in the nose of the bumper, where I have seen the date written on several bumpers. Well, the yellow marker is clearly over the top of the green color.

So this makes me wonder if the bumpers did come prepainted, but then maybe they would get a quick scuff on the assembly line & had a quick respray to color match the fenders & hood.

This would make an awful lot of sense & brings everything mentioned above together.

Seem likely?