In continuing random overheated afternoon efforts to clean up the old truck a bit, I realized that the inherited front plastic license holder was a bit of an eyesore. Not being the type to offer cheeky driving advice (“put down the phone and drive”), shout about politics or sports (I detest both), or otherwise engage in bumper philosophy*, I decided to remove it completely. Some provinces require both front and rear plates but ours hasn’t figured out how to extract more tax from our wallets with them (yet) and so doesn’t impose such rules. That removal was two-screws-easy but it left me with another problem, two big obvious holes in my shiny bumper. Remember this truck is from an era when body parts were mostly metal, not plastic. There are lots of tips and methods online for filling holes in newer bendy bumper material but I could find none for good old-fashioned steel.
* It’s worth noting that I did consider a decorative plate with either the quadratic equation or a red-shift physics joke but decided that would only confound a majority of the local roadway audience.
Being the frugal sort, I didn’t want to pay twenty bucks plus at least that much shipping for special plugs sold online to people that are obsessive-compulsive about such things. It wasn’t forty dollars worth of ugly to me. But it did look as if something had just ‘fallen off the front’ so I wanted to dress it up with bits of kit already in my possession. I tried small squares of found aluminum tape – not duct tape “the handyman’s secret weapon” but actual shiny sticky tape. That didn’t match closely enough and looked, basically, like I had stuck tape over two holes. I could have used some alternative plug and cover scheme with superglue or bolts or other nonsense to achieve dodgy results but why when I have science on my side?
My first thought was simply to order some small disc-shaped super magnets to cover the holes from the outside and that would certainly work. Directly on the surface of the bumper they’d be nearly impossible to dislodge. They come as thin as 1mm which would be quite unobtrusive too but I know from experience that the (usually nickel) plating on those magnets wears off easily in wet conditions and would soon begin to rust on the spot. That meant the right idea was to put the magnet on the inside to hold a bumper-matching metal cover placed outside.
Already in my mad scientist inventory was a box of neodymium “rare earth” magnets in a range of shapes and sizes easily large enough to cover the 10mm holes in my bumper. I’ve used these magnets for all sorts of successful projects in the past (kitchen knife bars, door closures, hold downs, etc.) and so chose a pair of 20x30x5mm out of my bag of tricks which offered plenty of strength and coverage. You can readily get any size or shape you need from eBay where a pack of ten usually costs around two bucks with free shipping. Hong Kong is handy like that.
In amongst my hardware orphans I found a roll of steel banding. Real steel, not aluminum. It might even be stainless but I can’t tell and it doesn’t matter. I have no clue where or why I bought it but I suspect it was for some sort of appliance or duct repair in my history. Apparently they also use the stuff in warehouses who ship heavy machinery as a way to strap things down to pallets. If you can’t find a roll at your local hardware store (as I surely must have done in my past… somewhere… some when…), find a giant gizmo warehouse in your neighbourhood and go beg a cubit or two from a kindly manager. You could also buy any shiny metal widget of the right thickness over in the ducting section for a few pennies and cut what you need from that. Worst case, an online search for “steel banding” will get you close after you wade through all the Caribbean music references. My roll happens to be 5/8-inch wide and a whopping 0.8 millimetres thick. I suspect even thinner would work but thicker will be hard to cut and bend such tiny shapes. Especially if you’re the clever sort and start trying to fashion batman or hello kitty shapes instead of my boring old squares.
A note about safety on this project is necessary. Neodymium magnets are incredibly brittle since they’re not actually made with solid metal. They may look solid because of the cheap nickel coating but if two of them snap together with enough force, they will shatter sending shrapnel towards you and your eyes. This is not just some slim chance risk, this happens ALL the time. I’ve shattered several when I turned my head and two have found each other. Wear safety glasses. I’m begging you. They’re so strong that they can seriously pinch your skin if you get in their way too. As in “take a chunk of flesh with them” strong. Wear good sturdy gloves to protect yourself, which you need to do anyway because the steel banding is basically a roll of razor blade. It will cut you so easily that you won’t know you’ve been cut until you look down and see blood all over everything. Safety glasses. Thick gloves. You have been warned.
The hardest part was getting my hand up under the bumper to place the magnets behind the holes. Believe me when I tell you these magnets are strong. You’ll have to fight to get them into position once they’re stuck to metal so aim as best you can at first attraction. After they’re in place cut two squares of metal band using straight tin snips. You’ll likely need to hammer them as flat as possible after being on the roll and being mildly twisted on the edges from your cutting tool. If there’s a curve profile to your particular bumper you can try to match it but on such small squares I suspect flat will be the right answer. Find an improvised anvil to hammer upon and cover your squares with a thin cloth to protect from scratching while you do your best impression of a medieval blacksmith.
Depending on the thickness of your bumper you’ll likely want to bridge the gap between the magnet behind and the front face of the bumper for the best contact with the cover. If you can’t find a spare metal nut in your junk drawer of the correct thickness, just cut a thin strip of the steel band and fold it on itself with two pairs of pliers the number of times needed to build up thicknesses to make a conductive spacer that fits your size needs.
Speaking of thicknesses and such, you can certainly do this by trial and error fitting but save yourself a lot of headache with a digital caliper. I’ve had one in my toolbox for ages and they’re incredi-handy. They can get you to fractions of millimetres are a great help when trying to identify nuts, bolts, and other hacking tidbits on your projects. Plus they’re everywhere for under twenty bucks these days.
The finishing squares you cut will now hold tight to your metal bumper but just in case you don’t trust science or can’t get an exactly perfect contact fit, you can put the tiniest little blog of super sticky glue pad* in the gaps behind and let the magnet compress it to make good contact. Attaching with goo alone would melt in summertime heat or make the cover sit above the surface but when a small amount is held in place by the magnet, it offers adhesion insurance without ruining the visual trickery we’re going for here.
* I used Uglu which you can simply snip with scissors and it worked well. Buy it at your hardware or Mega store for a couple bucks but don’t get suckered into $30 plus shipping and handling from the late night infomercials I’ve heard people complain about online. It’s handy stuff but not THAT handy. Products like “black tac” or others made by 3M, Ulu, et. al. should work fine if they’re flexible enough to stand the temperature extremes. This might be a supply question for your local hobby store.
Even if you do lose a cover driving down the road it will take you five seconds to cut a new one. I haven’t dropped any in the three weeks of city and highway driving thus far so I think they’re on there pretty well. I’ll notice quick if one falls off because those ugly holes stand out like a sore thumb. Enjoy the bumper tinkering.
