BUILD THREAD A Teenager and His Malibu Wagon.

[64nailhead]

Been borrowing my moms infrared temp gun out of the kitchen drawers 😂 Thank you

It’s a cheap tool that can be used more than most realize. Definitely much more than for coolant temp. If your motor is running correctly, then from a cold startup monitor the temps on the exhaust manifold and retain that info. Trying to find misfires with a heat gun is stupid easy with some base data.

 

[BlairC_789]

Bumper Tucking

So I had a bit of free time today and decided to pull the front bumper and get it over with. I want to tuck my bumpers because they stick out comically far and I don't have bumper fillers that are in good condition.
Took some measurements and it looked to be about 1 7/8" on one side and 2 1/4"T on the other that I could tuck the bumper in. I decided to just go with 2" since the bumper wasn't completely centered anyway. Taking the front bumper off was a breeze since I had soaked the bolts down with penetrant 2 or 3 times in the past couple months. Got some 2 inch masking tape and ran a piece down each side at a slight angle to prevent having to cut and reweld the bumper mounting plates. Cut the bumpers with an angle grinder and then also smoothed the edges off and removed the chrome in order to weld.

Put the pieces together and put some tacs on the bumper and went to do a test fit. The driver side was perfect and the passenger side needed to be rotated 3 degrees or so pulled it off and re did the tacs on the passenger side and then got to work welding the bumper up. Ran a bead down the front and then down the backside. Got out the grinder again and grinded the welds smooth on the front side. Then threw some silver paint over the welds for now since Ill be making a custom air dam and radiator intake vent soon.



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Mounted the bumper up onto the car and got it centered with the help of my

father. The fitment was exactly what I had in mind. In order to fill in the left over gap I decided to trim the bumper fillers that I have and then threw a quick coat of spray paint over them. When the car gets painted ill properly fix this since those pumper fillers are so sun faded, flake like chalk and have holes burned through them. For now it works great. As you can see in the final pictures the bumper edges go just past the sides of the headlight trim.

 

[64nailhead]

Wow, nice job!

 

[SS_Malibu]

Fantastic! I'm sure the rear bumper is next. This is something a lot of us would like to do.

 

[airboatgreg]

Nice. Can you come on over and do mine?

 

[oldsmobile joe]

You might want to lock or restrict the bumper shocks from working. One love tap on the bumper will crinkle a fender.

 

[Longroof79]

I drilled out and drained the bumper shocks, Positioned the bumper at a chosen length and locked it in place with a self tapping bolt.
Nice work so far. Looks like you had the right vision all along. 😉👍
You've made a lot of progress on your project in short order.... nice work!

 

[michmalibuman]

Looking good, keep up the good work.

 

[BlairC_789]

You might want to lock or restrict the bumper shocks from working. One love tap on the bumper will crinkle a fender.

didnt even think about that. Ill be doing that now when I pull everything off again to do the airdam.

 

[BlairC_789]

I did a small photoshop a little bit ago for what I would like to do for my front air dam.

The cut out area I have will be a bit smaller but the idea Is that I can have a bottom feed radiator while at the same time reducing drag on the under body. I've looked into making a body pan for some more efficient drag reduction and more down force but it doesn't seem like an easy task with these cars. Mostly because things just sit to low to make an under body pan not drag everywhere since this is a daily driver. So for now ill be making a front air dam with something that can bend if I scrape on something. (Maybe garden edging)
I'm doing all this instead of buying a fiberglass bumper/air dam combo because money of course and i would be afraid of cracking a fiberglass air dam after I do a paint job on the car. Also because I'm not the biggest fan of the one piece look.

As you guys were asking. Yes, I will be doing the rear bumper too because also not a fan of the one piece look of a roll pan. Ill probably be bugging LongRoof79 about how he did his because his rear bumper looks freaking awesome!
Also ordered some new LED headlights last night. The current ones have water in them and just aren't bright enough to be considered safe to me.