Here’s the face only a mother could love. The old bumper filler disintegrated on the way home from PA after I bought the car. It has been toothless ever since.

The grill was also part of the program. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to repaint the blacked out one on the car or go with a factory chrome one, so I ordered a replacement for the princely sum of $24 from RockAuto.com

Pulling the grill was a simple matter of removing six star headed screws. Clearly that area needs the deft touch of a spray bomb job.

I took a second to jam the new chrome grill into the car and I wasn’t sure that I liked it.

On a stock Caprice the chrome piece would probably be fine, but the idea of having a blacked out grill that matched the wheels closely was attractive to me.

That’s my son using his kid hands to reach in and clean up some of the areas I couldn’t reach. The giant Lohnes noggin prevented him from getting his face inside the grill opening.

Next, I yanked the bumper off as it seemed the only way I’d be able to properly fit the new bumper filler was to get everything out of the way. It came off easily after removing the eight nuts that retain it.

After the bumper went, I pulled the headlight lenses and the chrome headlight surrounds. It was looking like the “man without a face” at this point. This was probably about 45 minutes total work to this point. 

It was at this point that I attacked all the stuff inside the grill opening with black spray paint. Not shown in this photo, but I blasted all of the stuff that would normally show itself behind the grill chassis black.

Here’s the grill as it was when I removed it from the car. I liked the look that someone else had already done by blacking out the center and leaving the chrome rim. I didn’t want to alter that, just make it nicer.

Here’s why it needed to be freshened. All that time on the leading edge of the big car had resulted in lots of chips and the black paint was UV faded pretty badly.

After cleaning, sanding, taping, and prepping the grill, I shot the bajasus out of it with black paint. I did a few coats with the hopes that I’d stave off immediate chipping.

I decided to paint the Chevrolet name plate black as well, rather than have it be all glaring in factory faux chrome. I think it came out looking good.

Next up, I test fit the new rubber bumper filler. Apparently there are fiberglass versions of these things that suck out loud, but this rubber piece, which was another Rock Auto purchase (for about $40 bucks) fit great.

I started prepping the rubber by scuffing the surface thoroughly with fine grit sandpaper. The intention here is to get any type of coating off of the part and to give the paint some texture to stick onto.

I made sure to leave no part of this piece unscathed!

A body shop pal of mine told me to wipe the whole thing down with Isopropyl alcohol when I was done sanding. He said that this alcohol does the best job to prepare the surface for paint by stripping any junk off it left by sanding.

Next up was the Dupli-Color adhesion promoter which is basically a clear primer designed to help paint stick to parts like this rubber bumper filler.

This plastic specific paint is the way we went because it has some of the flexing properties needed to deal with parts that expand and contract with heat like rubber does.

After a couple of light coats from the spray can, our bumper filler was looking good enough to install. We left it to dry for several hours before messing with it. Patience is a virtue in some situations.

Here you can see the freshly dried grill and bumper filler ready for installation. Bolting the thing back together was no different than taking it apart. The bumper filler lined up perfectly and we fastened it with some new stainless steel screws. There are 17 screws that hold the piece on. Once they were fastened, we reinstalled the bumpers, headlight buckets, and lenses. The result?

Was this! The car looks 1000% better in the front with the fresh grill and no gaping hole between the fenders and bumper. It is amazing how such a simple operation and such a small investment can make sure a huge difference in the look of the car. What do you think? Did I make the right call with the black grill? I still have the chrome one hanging around here somewhere. Stay tuned for next week’s update as we spruce up the interior with help from our pals at Auto Meter!