MX-3.com

soon i will be getting rid of the body kit on my car...before you ask why let me explain...i bought the car about 8 months ago off of a friend. a year or so before that my friend had his friend who is somewhat of a bodywork guy mold on combat sideskirts and installed combat front bumper (not molded). he also did some custom bondo work to get rid of the indentation thing that runs down side of the car, which looks cool...the problem is he didnt do a great job because the molding is cracking where all of the bondo is. and it needs to be redone. i called the bodywork guy and he said he would redo everything for me this summer for a decent price. which is all well and good, but the problem is a few days ago i was driving in snow hit a curb and cracked my bumper in half. i cant drive without a bumper. this weekend i am going to buy a junkyard bumper put it on and remove all the bondo and the sideskirts from the car (so it looks stock again). my question is how do i go about doing this? i want to make sure i dont damage the sideskirts or any of the metal of the car (i couldnt care less about hurting the paint). but i wanna keep the kit in good shape for when i get the work redone. how do i take these things off without damaging them? like i said they are molded on...any help would be greatly apreciated because i am gonna try and do it this weekend so i can get back on the road. thanks for reading.

lightly tapping the areas where you suspect the bondo is(with a rubber mallet) should crack the old body fill. then you know what you are dealing with. if it is cracking already, then a plyable bonding adheasive obviously wasn't used and the bondo is THICK. So once cracked you shouldn't have much problem chipping away at it and should come out in fairly big chunks. the sides may be riveted on as well so taking them off could be quite a pain, maybe a good idea just to redo the bodywork and mold the sides back in again. good luck.

Out of interest do you have any pics of the car with the moulded side indentation? I've never seen that done before.

hey nos thanks for the advice...ill pick up a rubber mallet today and get to work. ill let you know how it goes. and yes i do have pics of the car here: http://www.angelfire.com/nj4/secondstory/mx-3 mind you these pics are about 6 months old and taken before most of the bodywork started to break but you can see cracks in it if you look hard enough. any other help on this topic would be apreciated. thanks.

hey i tried clicking the pic, but when I did only a chopped picture came out..is it me or the pic is corrupoted?

Im a bit curious here, are you sure its a FX front on the car? or is it maybe a Pakfeiferfront....

I allways thought the FX front looked ten times better than the Paki because it was more rounded to better follow the flow of the MX..

But in your picture that sharp edged look really shows, Is it really a FX front bumper

well, my friend said he got it from onderground and that it is the fx designs combat bumper...so i believed him

Oh okay so its only a copy and not the real deal, thanks for the info

justintoxicated wrote:my friend had his friend who is somewhat of a bodywork guy mold on combat sideskirts and installed combat front bumper (not molded). he also did some custom bondo work to get rid of the indentation thing that runs down side of the car, which looks cool...the problem is he didnt do a great job because the molding is cracking where all of the bondo is. and it needs to be redone. i called the bodywork guy and he said he would redo everything for me this summer for a decent price.

You are encountering what appears to be the results of some real shotty body work. Why in the world would you want to return to this same person and possibly get sub-standard work done again? I'd stear clear of this "friend" with the "decent price"....find a more reputable body-man, even if it does cost a few bucks more, your further ahead in the long run, unless you don't plan on keeping the car very long.
Just my 2 pennies.

well, it has been like 2 years since he has done the work, and when i talked to him, he guaranteed me it wouldnt crack when he redoes it, he said he got alot better at it, snd uses some new techniques so it wont crack.

If you are going to fill in the indentation on the side of the car like that and use straight body filler, dont even bother doing it again. Any real body man knows you have to do metal work before you fill. The more filler there is the more likely it is to crack.

justintoxicated wrote:but the problem is a few days ago i was driving in snow hit a curb and cracked my bumper in half. i cant drive without a bumper.

You cracked the bumper in half, or the bumper fascia in half? You can drive with no bumper fascia legally just fine as long as the bumper underneath is in tact.

lakersfan1 wrote:

justintoxicated wrote:but the problem is a few days ago i was driving in snow hit a curb and cracked my bumper in half. i cant drive without a bumper.

You cracked the bumper in half, or the bumper fascia in half? You can drive with no bumper fascia legally just fine as long as the bumper underneath is in tact.

?? Who cares...this thread is over a year old, why ressurect it?

LOL!