Broken Front Bumper "O" Ring

[blsj1486]

Hi.

Long time reader, first time poster here. Love the site

So, my Civic has treated me very well until today. Today i noticed that my bumper was just randomly hanging off. I always walk in front of my car when I get in and this morning I didn't notice a thing. Hell, after work I didn't notice it. But sure enough when I arrived home, I noticed the bumper above the wheel well on the driver's side was hanging off.

After further inspection, it seems that the "O" ring around the screw has cracked due to stress. To be honest, it's pretty damned cheap looking. I don't drive my car hard, and I'm pretty gentle on speed bumps, so I take it to my dealer to have them look at it.

A tech says that I can either buy a new bumper or have him "fix" it for free. I tell him to go ahead and fix it, since new bumpers run in the hundreds of dollars. He casually unscrews the screw, pushes the bumper back in, bends the pastic just enough so it will hold, and puts the screw back in. Most of the bumper is still sticking out at this point.

Then the guy who sold me my car comes over to shake my hand and chit chat. He looks around my car and at the problems and says ah it's ok. "At least you didn't lose your screw". Obviously he can see that my less than one year old car's bumper is sticking out. He then casually strolls away and says, "Maybe you should trade that in for an Si."

I talk to the tech some more and he says that this is a common problem. He tells me the inner part of the ring is very weak and that vibration eventually gets to and causes it to snap, and that most people just learn to live with it. He also says I'm lucky the other side is still ok.

So now I sit here insanely pissed off, because my bumper is damaged from Honda's design flaw.

I've included a link to a thread where you can see pics.

Broken Bumper Clips - V6 Performance.net Forums

(6th post down)




So has anyone else encountered this problem, and if so how did you reliably fix it?





I apologize for the ranty writing style and I know this is only an aesthetic problem, but I didn't expect something on my car to break so soon. Thanks for the help.

[Zeuceone]

ive had my car for 3 years and havent had that problem. you can epoxy a washer or plastic piece with a hole onto that area to fix it.

[Nomar06]

Mine is broken and no screw for about a year or so and you cant tell there is anything wrong. Maybe there is something else wrong? Once i "pop" the side in it just sits pretty flush.

[Yodums]

Mine's like that. It's happened on my 2006 Civic LX and 2007 Civic Si. I just do what the tech did to yours, unscrew it, pop it back in and hope the screw holds the layers.