I Fixed My Bumper With JB Weld and I'm Ashamed

This will actually be a bit of a random, catch up post.

Around a month ago, my mom had fallen out of bed and hurt her arm and hip. They took her to the hospital to check it out, and at first they thought she'd had a stroke or something, but that wasn't the case. I think they were just going by past history. Anyway, she'd either been dreaming or hallucinated that she was on top of a rock, and there was a missile coming at her, so she dove off. After she was out of the hospital, they moved her to a rehabilitation place.

For Mother's day, she wanted to go to Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant, which is just outside Knott's Berry Farm and not far from her place. She thought she would be out on the Monday after, and that was our original plan. She wasn't out, and we pushed it back a week. She thought they were going to send a nurse with her, so we had planned on that. Turned out they weren't going to be doing that, but they wanted to send her in a wheelchair. We don't have quite enough room for that in Kutcher, so we talked Surrogate into coming as well, so we could haul the chair in Scruffy. Didn't really take that much talking into!!! I'd never been there, and I was wondering what the parking situation would be like. Found a Reddit post that said there's an hourly lot off to the left, and they validate for two additional hours. Found it as they said, pulled in, and pulled off out of the way to get my wife and mom out and set up before we went off to try and find parking spots.

While we were getting them set up, after I'd gotten my wife's walker out of the back of Kutcher and the wheelchair out of Scruffy, a spot opened up right by were we were unloading. The hatch on Kutcher was still open, and my mom's wheelchair was right behind it. I was trying to get people to move, so I could get that spot, and pulled over there with the hatch hanging open, and it somehow hooked the bumper a bit on the wheelchair. A few months ago I'd drug it a little coming out of a driveway with a bunch of people in the back, and the passengers' side will occasionally pop out a little ever since.

After we ate, we went back to her place, where she had some watches that needed the batteries replaced. While she'd been in the recovery place, my nephew Eyeball and his wife (who I haven't seen in forever) had given her a couple of coloring books and pencils, Sarcastic Jesus and Jesus on Vacation. This was the first page of Sarcastic Jesus, and Surrogate and I were losing it over it!!!

I had been meaning to take a closer look at that bumper situation ever since it became an issue. It has a series of slots that correspond to catches on the body, but the forward one was broken, and it has a screw going in from in the wheel well that seemed like it wasn't mounted solidly anymore.

Took out that screw, and pulled the bumper away, and the leading edge of the plastic that mounts to the body was broken off. I sanded it for adhesion, and saw there was a groove just below the mounting area that was around 1/8” wide and 1/2” deep, so I cut a piece of aluminum bar to place in there, then put a bunch of JB Weld on the ends of the break and the groove, and held it in place with tape until it set. Also put some on the broken part of the bumper slot, I don't know how well it'll hold, but it's better than it was.

You can see the aluminum bar on the shot with the tape removed. It's holding like it should now.

Back when I was at the fly by night plastics forming company, the machinist that was there when I came along would repair the aluminum forming tools using JB Weld, which has terrible thermal properties for doing thermoforming on. Those of us who had actual themoforming experience would use Devcon aluminum repair epoxy, which has a high content of aluminum, and has much better thermal properties, and we would mock him mercilessly for his use of JB Weld. Since I've been out of there, I use JB Weld for everything!!! Just the week before, the panel for the window switches had broke, and I also used JB Weld on it.

Unrelated, but could have been in the previous post, I picked up these electronic mosquito repellers. I was skeptical, but turns out they work great!!! They give off a high pitch tone that you can hear when you first turn 'em on, but after a minute you don't even notice it.

Another unrelated, I was ordering some items for Walmart, and they had this Dirty Mountain Dew that they said was getting down to limited amounts, so I picked up a couple packs to try it. It says cream soda, but it tastes more like the actual dew with the cream added, that they've been having at Taco Bell. Better than some (once you get past it not actually tasting like cream soda) but I don't think I'll be going out of my way for it again!!!