can someone list all of the body kits that are available in polyurethane? i am looking for a kit but cant find anything i like in urethane. i know my selection is limited but someone give me some good news. TIA all!

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1998 Eclipse RS. Nothing great here.
Added the turbo wing and lowered it
down. More to come.

blitz, stillen

VeilSide

urethane is horrible, why the hell would you want it? If you hit some thing it wont break the bumper, but it will chip the paint off. Urethane kits have really shitty fitment and no benefits to them. by far i would choose fiberglass because you can repair it very easily. As where, when you get a tear in the urethane its a huge pain in the ass to prep and you cannot use bondo

wings west has urathane too. check out www.wholesalehyperformce.com they have several kits and many come in urathane...

on another note.. i have a urathane front.. i figured i'd get it cause it would hold up to damdge better.. now it has withstood a major pothole incident.but it fits like shit..(better than most, but i'm still unhappy with it).. and after a few years in the sun and shade. it will eventually start to warp ....sorry.just my .02

Realllllllly???? I thought Urethane fits better for one. Its flexible and if you give it supports that it shouldnt sag as much. I mean it is more expensive for some reason. It handles rock chips better too, b/c my fiberglass can't handle rock chips worth a damn. More info anyone?

Its a toss up...both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Let me state the obvious:

Fiberglass: Cheaper in cost, breaks/cracks easier...repairable
Urethane: More expensive, more durable, yet if it does crack...virtually unrepairable

I wouldn't go as far to say urethane 'doesn't fit' - as with fiberglass I think it just a matter of getting lucky. I've seen urethane bumpers that fit flawlessly, I've seen fiberglass bumpers that fit flawlessly...and vice versa.

My opinion? I say fiberglass is the way to go. It's cheaper, and even though it does crack easier than urethane, it won't crack if you are careful. Even if you are scraping, if you take it slow it won't crack. It isn't paper thin....at least mine's not :-)

here's the answer:

"it's all in the mold"

if your kit comes from a good mold then fitment will be good. simple as that.
later

^ Indeed.

I have heard much good about Wings West urethane bumpers. My friend has a Street Fighter (or whatever one you can get with teh fangs) and it is perfect, but so does my fiberglass Sinsei front. And like Shuwa said, its all in teh mold. As for advantages n whatnot....

Glass: Easier to repair, easier to paint, easier to fit, cheaper to replace.

Urethane: If fitment is off....good luck, Painting may be a lil more because they have to use an additive to allow the paint to stretch with the urethane, if broken you are pretty much screwed.

I would personally go with fiberglass, they are easy to customize, repair, and are hella cheap. And if you bottom out on a urethane one enough its still gonna look like ass whether or not it is cracked due to warping and paint chipping off. Just my $.02, discuss and dissagree if you like.

I always hear people say that urethane can’t be fixed, but one of those crazy ASOG guys recently built a custom urethane front end by splicing together a stock Sebring and Eclipse front bumpers. I would think that if he managed to piece together two urethane bumpers you would be able to fix a crack.

Here’s the link:
http://bbs.asog.net/viewtopic.php?t=46101

Some excerpts:

I finished my front end a while ago, painted it and put it on. I just finished putting the final touches on it. It started out life as a 97-99 eclipse front end, was joined with 17 pieces from a cut up sebring front end to form what you see here. The main opening has been enlarged vertically by 2 inches, and the fog light tunnels are custom. This thing probably took me around 100 hours to make (almost 2 months worth of work). I love what it does to the car. As soon as I got it on (before it was painted), I stepped back and kicked it as hard as I could. It just flexed and took it without any damage. I wanted urethane because I scratch my stock front so much that a fiberglass one just wouldn't survive, especially considering body kit fronts are usually 3 inches lower.





I used a couple of epoxies on the front end, the best being 3M's 8115 panel bonding. I used it to smooth out the front between the headlights. It's around $35 a tube and I used almost 3 tubes of it (I only really needed to use 1 tube but it was my first time making something like this). That stuff is designed to hold on quarter panels (like on the new urethane chevy pickup boxes) so it bonds like crazy to plastics.

I stood back and kicked the front end mostly cause I didn't want to pay to have it painted and then tap a curb and something break. I wanted to make sure it was strong. I had to close my eyes when I did it, though. If anyone so much as touches it I'd kill them so no one get any ideas about kicking it

the main reason why i wanted to go with urethane is because my front bumper scrapes all over the place. just recently, i hit a huge pothole and my bumpers paint chipped all up the side and everything. the water company is paying for it because they caused the huge pothole but what if it wasnt their fault. i would be out the money for paint. i am not rich, by all means. :-) which front do you guys think looks the best. i am thinking about this one. http://www.visracing.com/newkits03-08-02/eclipse%2097/01.htm. what do you guys think?

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1998 Eclipse RS. Nothing great here.
Added the turbo wing and lowered it
down. More to come.

Looks ok, hope that fiberglass front tho that you get doesnt have major headlight sag like the picture you just posted

1999 Mitsubishi Eclipse GS 10th Anniversary OZ Edition
Check Out My Site For Pix
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/EclipseRaceR/MyEclipse/VIS%20CF%20Hood/

i know exactly how he made that front, pop rivets and bondo, and i can guarantee he is gonna have problems with it if it ever gets streched too far

i got a little bit of headlight sag, but supposedly that's only because of the way it was originally installed by the last body shop....so it's supposed to be getting fixed. Other than that, its hard to keep paint on it too, once again, I don't know if that was the quality of paint job the 3 previous times... But ya my bumper takes a beating, I slammed into quite a few curbs and poles. Don't even get me started on scraps.

But my choice is still urethane over fiberglass on a front end. Skirts I would say fiberglass.

I also wondered about which is better when I ordered my body kit. After getting the Aerogear stuff, I'm glad I paid more. The body shop showed me a urethane peice they had in, and it was utter shit. They said it was practically worthless, while my aerogear pieces were so easy to prep and install. Biggest concerns should be pinholes and fitment. Pinholes happen when there are little pockets of air in the piece, and when they are painted, the paint sinks into the holes, and then looks like someone pushed a little pin-needle into it. The better hand-laid fiberglass has very few of these.

I would stay away from urathane personally. It just isn't very easy to design, and therefore you don't get a very good fitting piece. Thats not to say a lot of fiberglass kits dont fit well. All in all, I'd say spend as much as you can on your body kit, because you GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. I can't stress than enough. Thats all :)



1996 Eclipse RS / 5-Speed / Body Components by Aerogear / Coated in Magnetic Red Metallic v2 - More at http://home.insightbb.com/~mgalyan/
Mark Galyan - Greenwood, Indiana