Stillen Front Bumper (v2) Detailed Pictures
 

Just received my Stillen Front Bumper this evening via the idiots at fedex (box badly damaged, luckily the bumper was fine).

First, let me start by saying that this thing is A LOT more flexible than I ever imagined, much more so than the factory urethane bumper. I'm not sure that I particularly like that, but we'll see how it goes.

Bumper looks great out of the box, don't see many issues in the finish that won't be sorted out with a coat of filler primer and a bit of sanding.

Now, about the "ears" that Stillen decided to go with to keep shipping costs down. I was against the idea from the beginning, and having one in-hand now I definitely still think it was a bad idea. As you can see from the pictures, only 1 of the 4 corners that meet on these "ears" matches up well. Both of the rear sides the ears stick out a little more than the bumper part, and will require quite a bit of filler or a REALLY good clamping during the glue stage. The passenger side inside corner doesn't match up at all, and is going to require trimming a few millimeters off of the ear and a good blending with filler for it to work.

The face of the seam on the drivers side is pretty good, should only need minimal body work to get it smooth. The passenger side on the other-hand, has some spots that are flat, and some that are not. This will require a good bit of sanding and filler to correct.

All in all, I would imaging a body shop is going to charge about $200 to install those "ears" and blend them into the bumper correctly. How much shipping did it save Stillen? Not too happy with that.

Other than that, lower mounting holes were all drilled out, but the uppers were not. I'm not sure if that was a mistake, or if that is how they will all come. One of the lower holes looks like it was drilled twice, and only has about 3mm of urethane left on the edge to keep it a hole instead of a 'U' slot.

Going to put off painting for another weekend and spend this weekend doing my brake calipers and getting these ears blended instead.

Anyways, here are the pictures:

Front Side:

http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...3-100-1256.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...7-100-1261.jpg

Parts Included:

http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...8-100-1263.jpg

Back Side:

http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...5-100-1258.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...4-100-1257.jpg

V2 under headlight section:

http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...6-100-1259.jpg

"Ear" Assembly:

http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...2-100-1255.jpg

Drivers Side (only bolted, no glue):

http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...9-100-1264.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...0-100-1265.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...5-100-1271.jpg

Passenger Side (only bolted, no glue):

http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...2-100-1268.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...1-100-1267.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...3-100-1269.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...4-100-1270.jpg

When you say sanding do you mean there are bumps, almost like warping? I'm thinking of getting the sideskirts but worry about the bulges.

any imperfections in the finish. Be it bumps, scratches, anything. ANY body piece is going to require at least a filler primer coat and sanding to get it smooth. You can paint things out of the box but they won't be nearly as nice as they would be if you put a little time into the prep

Thanks for the honest review thus far. Not very common to have reviews posted without bias these days. Good luck.

in for updates

:iagree:

the bumper will look good. Just make sure yo have a quality body ship installing and painted your bumper. And make sure they test fit!

I will be doing my own test fitting, bodywork, and installation. The shop will only be doing the paint.

I have no doubt it will look great installed, was just a little disappointed when seeing how much work will be involved with installing and smoothing the ears. Everything else looks great

Trust me its worth it and looks amazing. Stillen did a good job!

FYI on the sideskirts ( I got them) the whole part that runs inside the door is held on by doulbe sided tape and when the temps here got above 95 the tape started letting loose and would not stay due to the weight of the side skirts.:mad: I had to take it back to the body shop and they ended up using epoxy to hold it together. Aslo the sideskirts were a little warped out of the box. I hope your front bumper fits better than mine, the body shop I take my cars to said it was one of the worest fitting bumpers they had ever seen. You have to completely remove the washer bottle to install this bumper, I've been sending pm's to kyle and josh for over a month about the the supposed smaller washer bottle kit for the bumper but they wont reply back.

Sorry for hijacking your thread.

you hjacked it with the most amazing avatar ever!!!

How warped are the sideskirts is it something that won't go away? I really want to buy these sideskirts but am afraid of the flaws.

The double sided tape just kept coming unattached it was bad enough that it kept the side skirt away from the body, I'll try to get some of the pics my body shop took and pm you them.

Im very satisfied with the look of the of the bumper and side skirts but not with the fitment. Good luck with the bumper it will look good!

Wretched- I'm sorry for not getting back to your PM's. I'll be completely honest that I'm really bad about PM's. Email and phone calls are usually the best way to get a hold of me, on most sites I actually turn PM's off. Unfortunately I don't always have enough time in the day to get to the PM's and if I don't do it immediately it's just too easy to forget.

The windshield washer bottles are in stock so please feel free to call in and we'll get one sent out for you right away!

In regards to the 3M tape not adhering properly I can pretty much guarantee that either the part or the panel was not properly prepped...We use the exact same 3M tape on our car and it is the same 3M tape used to hold on the Nissan 370Z logos and door trims that you see on vehicle's. It is very durable and strong stuff. In order to properly prep the panel you do need to sand the panel that you plan on sticking the tape to. You need to scuff it up enough to get rid of the shine and then apply the adhesion promoter packet which is essentially a liquid glue. It will help bond the tape to the scuffed paint.

To prep the urethane you must do the same thing. Scuff the surface to get rid of the shine. To scuff either surface simply use a scotch brite pad. It doesn't need to be sanded or anything and it doesn't take much work.

To the OP- I'm sorry that your ears aren't matching up perfectly. We have a jig that the guys use to drill the bolt holes and it's supposed to line up the part before the drilling. I'm concerned though that the guys might not be keeping the ears with the fascia after the drilling is completed and instead just putting the ears in one area and the fascia in another then grabbing one of each when an order comes in...I will have to look at how this procedure is being handled.

Thanks for the feedback and I look forward to seeing your final thoughts!

Kyle
I'm interested in buying the sideskirts but have a couple concerns. First, some people I have talked to tell me they have bubbling and or warping. How can I be sure I won't have the same problem. Second, I like to install things myself and don't want to test fit the sideskirts and just take it to get painted. Does the sideskirts require and modifications before installing?
Thanks

you should always prep. Just in case

i like the stillen front bumper a LOT....but if i get this my parents would flip!! they would be like WTF you change cAR??

haha when I had mine people were like wtf what car is that.

ALWAYS TEST FIT FIRST!!!!ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS!!!!

It won't take long on the 370Z. It's actually pretty easy to do the test fitment on rockers, the standard rockers come off pretty easily and the test fit is really just putting the rocker on and holding it in place to make sure there are no urethane build ups in an area that might prevent a perfect fit. Plus, you might find that an edge needs to be sanded down a little bit to fit perfectly or something like that. It's worth it to do the test fitment first.

The good thing about urethane is that it's very easy to work with. I put some fiberglass fenders on my Titan and I literally spent about 16 hours trying to make them fit half way decently, then my paint shop spent another 4. Urethane is MUCH easier than that! When I put on my roll pan all I had to do was hold it into place, drill a couple mounting holes, then I spent an extra 45 minutes or so because I wanted to retain the factory back up sonars so I removed them from the rear bumper and flush mounted them into the roll pan.

That looks like crap. :)

did a test-fit last night. More to come after Josh responds to my concerns.

Ok guys, pics coming at the end of this post, but first an explanation of how it fit on the first test-fit:

First of all, I have not blended in the "ears" yet, I just left them bolted for now to be sure everything fit before I got into any of the finishing on the bumper.

Pulled my stock bumper and the injen washer fluid bottle (which will not fit with the Stillen bumper BTW), and put the Stillen on. I got one side at the headlights and fender snapped into place, and went to the other side to do the same. Once I snapped that side into place, the other side popped out. This happened 3 times, which leads me to believe that something just isn't fitting correctly. Basically, If I snap all of the clips on the drivers side, the middle section of the bumper where it meets the passenger side headlight will actually hit the headlight instead of sliding in.

At this point, I decided to put in a few of the body pins in just under the hood and try and do the same thing. I'm able to get the fender clips snapped in, but then there is a huge gap at the biggest bend right under the headlight.

I contacted Josh with this info, and he had Kyle tell me that there is a small post under the headlight that helps support the clips that hold the bumper in place there, and that you may have to trim the urethane around that post to get it to fit correctly.

I plan on doing another test fit tomorrow and determining if in fact that post is causing the issue, or if the bumper just isn't fitting correctly. I will update with findings when I have them.

Now, the pictures. Sorry they are dark, but I took them at 10pm

http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...2-100-1281.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...1-100-1280.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...0-100-1279.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...9-100-1278.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...8-100-1276.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...7-100-1275.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...6-100-1274.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...5-100-1273.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/carav...4-100-1272.jpg

*sigh*. What a PITA!

Hopefully you can get it sorted out tomorrow, otherwise send that POS back. I think the design is really nice and it would look good if done right, but if you have to go through this kind of ordeal to get the damn thing to fit it's not worth a penny to me!

That fitment is embarrassing, disappointing, and unattractive. Hopefully stillen will jut give a refund, because I'm not sure that POS can be salvaged.

:iagree:

Maybe they'll give you a free supercharger. Though I don't even know if that's worth anything either... :p

It's worth something, just 50 hp less than what they tell you it's worth ;x

It's kind of like buying a collection of subprime mortgages.

Or paying full price for swamp land?

I would let a professional deal with the bumper, I think it requires a pros touch to get it to look like what it's supposed to look like. I'm like you and I prefer to do my own work and keep the mechanics away from my car. But I don't have the skills to piece together and blend a bumper together.

I feel your pain. Hope it works out for you. Hopefully Stillen can make it right for you.

:roflpuke2::roflpuke2::roflpuke2:

So.......will there be a V3?

Looks like the same problems I had.

:roflpuke2:I love your Avatar:roflpuke2:

I would agree with you, but I have done a ton of bodywork in my life. Smoothed firewall and dash in my 55 Chevy truck, smoothed the side indents on my s13, a ton of dent pulling and smoothing on the 55 and a 66 mustang. This job would be a piece of cake if it bolted up.

Do you want me to come over with the hacksaw

comes pre hacked, no need :icon18:

:roflpuke2:

All you need is large can of

http://www.nakka-rocketry.net/ablative/bondo-repair.jpg

That's all fine if you're rich trip, otherwise, just, fill it with mud.

http://htmlgiant.com/wp-content/uplo...ies-in-mud.jpg