Removing the Front Bumper

It must be said that whenever you drive your car, it takes it on the chin. There's just no way around that. The nose panel is the front line of the wear & tear a vehicle takes each time it's driven. Salt, sand, snow, water, ice, gravel, mud—all of these make contact with the nose panel. Hence, the front bumper is a target for lots and lots of buildup of fine residue from the road, some of which is quite corrosive.

On an E320 Cabriolet, you see it in damage to the grill, the paint around the grill, the headlights, and in a buildup of dirt inside the front fender pockets in front of the front wheels. There's a small ledge there where grit builds up and can cause corrosion. The fender will rust there, often from the inside out. There's also a rubber gasket at the bottom edge of the fender (see photo) where dirt can accumulate. Make sure that's clean as well.

Dirt builds up here

What can you do about this? For one thing, you can take every opportunity to clean the front fender pockets out. Stick compressed air in this cavity of the body and blow out any sand and dirt that may be stuck in there or anywhere around the wheel openings. If you have original fenders, there's an extra lip that runs around the perimeter of the wheel arches that can be a dirt trap. Keep that lip clean and dry. And if there's any loose paint around the wheel well openings, make sure to touch it up promptly. Rust often starts with either loose paint or an accumulation of dirt that's allowed to fester.

(Note corrosion in photo from the Web)

The other task I highly recommend is to remove the front bumper from time to time.  Held on by just six bolts, the front bumper is a piece of cake to remove. Removing it allows you to clean the nose panel behind the bumper far more thoroughly than you could with the bumper on. You can also touch up any corrosion or chips in the paint that could cause rust behind there. The entire process of removing the front bumper only takes a couple of minutes.

Once the bumper is off, take a very close look, particularly at the sheet metal directly beneath the front turn signals. Since my car is black, I touch up the paint with POR-15, an extremely tough paint that has become the Gold Standard for automotive rust prevention. POR-15 is available in gloss and semi-gloss black, grey, white and clear. You may also choose to prime and paint over the treated surface.

All in all, this is a good weekend chore for Cabriolet owners. Do it while you clean out the fender liners covered previously in this blog.