Hi folks,
A while ago, when I had my rear bumper off I remember seeing that the metal frame looked really terrible and crispy. The bits where the bumper actually hangs onto the chassis at the back were definitely wafer-thin and “touch and go”. I’ve been paranoid ever since that any slight tap and the whole thing will crash to the ground. Living on borrowed time is how I see it, so I’ve been keeping my eyes open.

A week or so ago I saw a replacement listed on eBay, by a seller I’ve used before, with the plastic described as ‘wavy’ but the steel in very good condition so I ordered that. He wasn’t lying - apart from a bit of light surface rust, the metal is very solid indeed.

This afternoon I persuaded the metal and plastic to part company. I wasn’t too brutal, as I was trying to learn/figure out how I would do the same with my own one so as to combine the good metal from the eBay one, with the good plastic from mine, so I was trying to get the plastic cover off ‘gently’. Predictably the 4 brass nutserts bonded into the plastic at the sides of the bumper (under the body colour trim) just spun around, so I had to get a hacksaw blade in there and saw through the bolts.

Then I had to prise the plastic and steel apart so that I could get the same hacksaw blade in between metal and plastic to cut through the adhesive/bonding agent used. Finally a pry bar and some wooden wedges to ease plastic and metal apart and the job was done - plastic in useable condition had I wanted to; metal in good enough nick that with a bit of care and treatment it would probably see me out. Galvanising would maybe be over the top, but possibly worth thinking about if I could add other stuff to make up the minimum weight. I just don’t know enough about how the galv would cope in that sort of location.

Anyway it’ll be a couple of months before I have the RR into the garage to tackle the long-ish list of jobs I’d like to tackle, so I thought I’d ask if anyone else had dealt with this, and whether there were any specific things to do/avoid or workarounds that I might need.

(For example, for the 4 brass nutserts where the metal side panels are bolted to the plastic - under the body coloured trim -I can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t just drill straight through these and then use a stainless countersunk head machine screw and a nyloc nut in this location. Or a socket head cap screw with a low profile head. I know what I mean, even if I have it described it too well!)

But any advice / hints very gratefully received. Thanks.

I know exactly what you mean.
I used countersunk bolts in stainless which just about give enough clearance for the body coloured trims to go back on.
It's been 3 yrs since I did mine and I can't remember specifics of the job just bits and bobs. I remember replacing the 4(?) Bolts holding the side extensions with ss too.
There are clips top and bottom which must be fitted, especially the top ones, to hold the skin tight to the steel to stop the lower tailgate rubbing when it's opened. I had to make new mounting points for the rear bumper and weld them in , horrible job which meant lots of trial fitting to get right. My extensions were in good nick though.
My bumper was also badly bent down on the top face rhs, God knows how that happened, but that took hours to straighten out. Front bumper top face was bent up and wedged tight to the headlamp trim, also taking ages to straighten out.. back to the rear bumper...I 'think' I had to counter sink the plastic slightly to get the counter sunk hex drive bolt to sit a little lower so the trim would go back on but can't be sure now.