svp928

Jerry, you are doing a great job there- its just a bit too involved for most people...(like me). I just removed the bumperettes on my car, and was going to make a louvered panel to cover the holes and allow air to escape from there, as I will someday have a trans cooler back there. I thought if you were going to do a replacement of some sort, it would be more sale-able to just make a cover for the existing holes. Then, I would not have to make them myself
You certainly do a nice job of the parts you make now, and didn't mean to cast aspersions on what you are doing! Its just WAY more than I would attempt myself.....
I'd be happy with some bolt-on panels that have downward facing louvers, so you don't see whats behind them, but air flows out freely. In fact, on my car, I may make a panel that goes all the way across, and just remove the license plate for track days. That thing is like a parachute back there...

Steve

Nicole

I was thinking of an insert that goes between the original bumper cover and the license plate, and covers the holes left by the bumperettes in some elegant way. This should be done such that when it is painted, there is only a minimal visible edge.

The area that covers the openings should either be solid, or should have a professional looking louver style.

dr bob

I was thinking along the same lines when I started reading this thread last evening. An add-on piece that sits in the original plate well, leaves the steel nerf pad supports attached to the rear inner bumper for protection. Fits over the steel with the same contours as the existing rear panel. The top and bottom edges would be easy to hide, just need to find a cool way to get the sides of the insert to mate up nicely with the existing bumper sheel. I'm not sure it could be cleanly blended to make the side joint disappear, so maybe an obvious seam with a clean treatment on the edges would do the trick. It would leave the original shell intact (and replaceable if necessary), leave most of the protection that the steel nerf supports lend, yet hide the obvious add-on look that the existing pads have.

Jerry Feather

This is not exactly finished yet, but close. I have to remove the paint from the rest of the bumper cover and then I can prime all of it. For now this is how the otherwise finished conversion/delete looks.

The pictures show the inside where I have doubled the plastic in various places for the patches and pieces moved. Then they show the outside as finished in SEM repair material and some flexible plastic surface putty.

pcar928fan

Jerry, don't forget to be legal you have to have a license plate light in there somewhere.

BTW, that looks pretty cool! Very unique!

Jerry Feather

That's one of the reasons it is only nearly complete. I will make a guide for the two lic plate lite cutouts to match the lites removed and then they will mount right in. You will recall that I was going to move them inward a little form their original positions. That is what I'll still do at any point before this is finalized. Good eye!!!

Jerry Feather

Bill Ball

Jerry: That will look real sharp on the car. Nice job.

S4ordie

Very very nice mod. Looking forward to seeing it painted, on the car, with a license plate installed.

Jerry Feather

Thanks, Bill. I have a lot to do before I put it on one of my cars, but I too think it will look sharp. I think it is the real way to delete the bumperettes, and will go along well with the other deletes that some of the guys are into right now.

Jerry Feather

Jim M.

Wow, I really like it. Good job Jerry.

UncleMaz

The "how to" part went right over my head, but that bumper is going look awesome finished on your car. Nice work Jerry.

Ispeed

Wow. Nice work, great idea narrowing the plate area. I never even thought of that.
Wow wow wow...

Bumperettes are for the birds.

BC

I think its great Jerry. I did something to an early bumper that removed the much smaller holes in the early bumpers. But it doesn't look as nice as yours.

BC

If you have any issue with the filler your chose, 3M makes a bumper repair mix that is almost exactly like our bumper material.

Jerry Feather

My brain has chopped, sectioned, shortened. lengthened, narrowed or widened more cars than you can shake a stick at over a lot of years. It has also developed a lot of ways to change things that someone else has created to fit a different need such as this.

The immediate thing that my brain sees when I look at the picture of your rear bumper cover is that the license plate area is to wide. The license plate is kind of narrow and the space for it is kind of wide. My brain says how would you fix that?

There is a lot of credible evidence on this thread about why there are bumperettes back there, but I still think they are there solely to fill up the gap left when the opening designed for european plates is utilized for US plates. OOPS, we have a big gap! Let's put a set of bumperettes in there to fill up the voids and no one will ever notice that we didn't bother to design a rear bumper cover for the US market.

This thread tells how my brain says to solve the problem. Simple as that.

Jerry Feather