Get some moxie and go epoxy!

   It's crazy how you can just type in "What rhymes with epoxy" and a list of words and definitions will appear before you. I didn't think I was going to be the first person to try to rhyme epoxy, but apparently I'm not even close. I'm like the millionth person to try and rhyme epoxy. And, like, what kind of a crazy world are we living in that one million people are trying to find words that rhyme with epoxy. This crazy world. And you may ask yourself, "How did i get here?" But let the days go buy and you may find yourself the millionth and oneth person to need a rhyme for epoxy. You probably won't You just might.

  I really want to build a boat. That has nothing to do with this post except that upon researching "How to build a Boat" i discovered that fiberglass comes in sheet form. Who knew.

 So my car bumper is falling off.

About three months after i bought it brand new i was driving on The Parkway and this car in front of me suddenly zooms to the left, drives off the pavement then pulls back right over the slight curb and zooms all the way to the right, crashes into the side divider zooms back to the middle and quickly decelerates directly in front of me. So i cut over to the left lane and it lightly touches my front bumber, and just barely knicks three of my right side pannels. The car behind me i guess didn't notice what was going one because it slammed right into the other car. They lived. 

Anyway my bumper seemed fine except for my fog light cover popping off, so i didn't have it checked out because my parents said it would raise my insurance, which is not true because my insurance wouldn't have been the one paying for it, which is why you shouldn't always listen to your parents. That's what google's for. 

This was two years ago, and my bumper has gradually been falling off ever since. The right fog light cover finally popped off on a road trip i took a few weeks ago, and that was the final straw for me to stop ignoring this problem. 

I got an estimate at the dealership and the price of a new bumper is $150, shipping is $200 (WTF?), installation is $100, and also it doesn't come painted so that's between $100-$200.  Lets say it would have cost me $600 plus a new fog light cover at $30. 

So i don't have a spare $600 at the moment as schools about to start and that shit's expensive. But i did just learn about fiberglass in sheet form (see how that worked) and epoxy. $13 to cover those costs. 

So, with a new found determination guided by a savings of 587 dollars or 97.8% (according to math)  i threw open the front door and greeted the day with a hard stomp to my car, a look of sheer moxie (Moxie means determination, if you didn't know. You could find out by googling what rhymes with epoxy. The answers include the definitions. Moxie is also a gross interpretation of cola.), and a cup of mediocre coffee. 

I got just past popping the hood before i had to break down and google. You see there are these weird plastic screw things without screw heads: 

And i couldn't figure out how to get them out without breaking them, which is what i was about to do. 

The trick is to jimmy them up with a flat headed screw driver between the circle and the screw. Which had previously been my downfall. It seems so simple now... 

The thing is some of them come up with no problem and some of them have, like, melted together overtime and are a real bear (not literally). There are like 14 of them surrounding the whole bumper (exactly 14) and when you're lying on your back with the fear of pulling a screw driver down into your arm or face and causing a bloody mess and the annoying voice in your head from yelling, "Game off!" they're especially annoying. And just when you finally get them all off and are like: Success!

You realize the fog lights are attached to the bumper with rusty bolts that fit nothing in your ratchet set (as you can tell from the totally clear picture above). Luckily I've encountered this problem before with the break lights, and found that there is a size of socket between the two sizes of socket that almost fit, that actually fits perfectly on all light related bolts.  Mine says 10 HUSKY and i forget what the actual size is, but probs 10mm if i had to wager a guess. Luckily i never will have to because i keep that socket head hidden in my trunk with all the other parts i buy specifically for my car where no one can find them under the trunk carpet in the spare tire... oh. Well, if it's not there next time i'll know it's because you stole it for a lighting bolt related issue (and not because i forgot to put it back) you bastard. 

As you can see the bumper is pretty broken. The gap isn't supposed to be there. There's also another hanging piece close to the middle that i can't show you without showing my licence plate which i won't... fully.  (also i'm too lazy to photoshop).

So above is the driver side bottom panel where the bumper is attached. It's a 90 degree angle from the wheel well which you can obviously tell from this picture that was taken to accent the angle (except not). 

The passenger side is more like a 231 degree angle because it's broke.

This is what a car looks like without a bumper:

Totally trashy right? Which is funny because this car is in excellent shape. This is why you can't judge a book by it's cover, and you can't judge a car without a bumper. So if you see a car driving without a bumper you should know in your heart that that car will be pulled over as soon as a cop sees it because that's illegal.

Epoxy!

So you just squirt, mix, and spread the epoxy on the broken parts:

And cover it with the fiberglass strips (according to the rules i just made up):

it takes 5 min to hold into place, 20 min to dry, and 24 hours to confirm dry-mation. With the car itself i held it in place for 5 min, which is a really long time when your holding two pieces of plastic together and wondering if your fingers are going to get stuck together like that time you made dream catchers with crazy glue and you had to basically rip them apart under very hot water and now your finger prints are different (except not really because they grow back the same unless there's a scar through them (in case you thought that was a good idea for crime-ing (twins that have the same DNA can only be told apart by there fingerprints which are different for reason science cannot explain (or at least the FBI detective that was giving us a tour of the Hoover building could not explain when asked by an 11 year old (me))))).  Then was like, "Fuck that." So i used packaging tape to hold it together on the bumper because its relatively strong and you can see through it. It's not just for packages ok? jeese. 

I then epoxied and fiber-glassed until it formed it's original shape (or pretty dang close!).

Also I used a clamp on the one side, which is that orange blur on the right. Anyway i let it sit 20 min then put it back on.

Then i'll let it sit 24 hours just so it's for sure dry. So when the fog light cover comes in next week i think it'll look pretty good from far away, which is what i was going for. Plus i found a bumper from a replica sight for $150 with free shipping but they're totally out of stock so hopefully this will hold be over until there not. Anyway ta-Da! Plus:

Sense of accomplishment: a bagillion % (according to math).

So job done, i washed off my hand:

ate a waffle cone:

and looked up a rhyme for epoxy.