I have done some mild searching and have not come across any discussions on this. Has anyone attempted to put a 94-97 Accord wagon rear bumper cover on a 94-95 Coupe?

The bumper cover on my car has been trashed since I got the car 3-4 years ago and is basically still secured with zip ties. I have been working to get this car "respectable for years. Replaced he driver side door because the door skin was barely attached and the glass had a major scratch on it. Replaced the Passenger fender, swapped a factory white hood from pick your part since mine was some cheap after market originally just primered. I added a 96-97 front bumper and Lip, again mine has zip tied on with no lip. I changed out the rear deck lid since mine was dented and had the stock wing which was roughly drilled and installed. New one is clean with no wing. I have changed out rear tails and front lights as well. Now its finally time for the rear bumper cover.
Rear bumper really needs replacing. Rear deck lid has a few runs in the clear but ill polish those out later when i everything is painted and i do a final wet sand.



I originally wanted a 96-97 cover but most posts say that's not going to work. I had settled on going with an OEM 94-95 cover but I keep thinking the back of the car just looks too high, I don't want some crazy lip, I want it to look somewhat stock. I would say Foose style, stock looking but cleaner and tighter. lol. I started looking online today and came across the Buddy style bumper that doesn't look too bad assuming I keep the rear center section black. It is a little bulky and square but close to passable.


Wish this was a better pic so i could get a better idea of what it would look like, Not feeling the lights either.


As I was shopping around I came across the Buddy for the Wagon and that one is great. It really makes the rear look more modern. I think the rear deck lid may need to be extended a bit but it does look like it may fit. Any thoughts? I did read a post that said that a 94-95 bumper may fit the wagon but the hatch will not open. I may need to go to pick your part and play Frankenstein a bit. Honestly... when i saw the rear of this accord i went right to craigslist to price out Wagons. lol. I think the angle its shot at makes it look cooler than it is but still..
Love it.

 

At my local pick-n-pull, I just tell them what parts I look for; and they would print out a list of which models and years I could lift the parts from. That said, the accord wagon is harder to find, and I only ran into it once in the yard.

 

yea, they are pretty rare, I have seen a few there tho, I just wanted to use it for test fitting so quality was not an issue.

I tried to photoshop the end result but I cant get it to look good, I did notice that the wagon has a straight body line from the tail light to the wheel well and the coupe/sedan has a dip. I would need to trim the new cover to fit and that would cut off the mounting point. I may just go with the Buddy... I think it will look good with a little trimming on the bottom and black paint on the center section. Ill swing by pick your part first and see if I can find a mint white cover, I look whenever I am there and have not found any perfect ones, maybe I just need a close to perfect one, no dings cracks, maybe a few scratches and I will just respray., it wont match the car anyway most likely.

 

Next week assuming its not too obscenely hot ill head over to the pick your part and take a look. I need to find a Prelude sunroof to try to put on the Accord and a steering wheel for my wifes civic. I'm getting pretty sick of looking at my rear bumper cover, I need to do something. I think I will most likely end up grabbing a stock rear cover. I saw the buddy online for around 150 and I was thinking that's not out of my price range, but they charge 200+ for shipping. You can get them on Amazon and Ebay but they are still around 300. I think If I'm going to do it ill figure out a way to make the Wagon cover fit, Its going to take time and some modification so... it may just fall off my project list. Maybe ill get lucky and find a clean stock bumper next week. I plan to order my Data logging cable next week as well and I'm sure once I get into those results ill want to buy the eprom burner and some eproms as well.

 

Wagons have a lower center section to match the floor for easier access of the trunk. This also goes for the latch mechanism, the LP is also lower on the wagons compared to the coupe/sedans, there is a bit of an illusion when looking at the back of both and thinking there is not much difference, but there is a huge difference. Even if you were to get a Wagon bumper, upper beam, and crash bar, the parts would probably not it a coupe/sedan as there is most likely a depth issue as well as a height and shape difference. Don't let the tail lights fool you either, they wrap around the rear corners unlike the flatter coupe/sedans that are only visible from the back.

 

Yes the taillights definitely have a lot more depth. The lower center section is the part that attracted me to the bumper, it just seems more modern. I was not too concerned about the latch, you wont see that with the trunk closed anyway. I was thinking that the rear deck lid would need to be extended a bit to match up. I didn't really get to the crash bar, I kinda eye balled it and the shape was similar in that area so I figured the cover would clear it. The problem is the section between the taillights and wheel wells has a very different shape and quite a bit of modification would be needed.

I still think this would look good but its certainly not a direct bolt on and would require some modification, its certainly possible. I wont be doing it anytime soon if ever, the bumper cover price is out of my price range for this car at the moment. Ill just be installing a new oem style or if I find something awesome at the pick your part ill get that instead.

 

Well I picked up a stock bumper at pick your part last week. It was a 50% off sale so it cost something like $15. Found a pretty much perfect bumper, it was very hot out so we didn't walk the whole yard. I would have preferred to get a white one but I grabbed one that had a green color. It was not a standard color so it had been repainted. I know now that that was a bad idea, never grab a repainted part. As I started scuffing it for primer I started to find a lot of spots that were flaking off. So the prep work when it was painted was half assed. I ended up taking 70-80% of the green paint off. I kept finding huge glossy sections under the paint. I was using the orbital sander and when I went thru the paint to the ABS I found later that the ABS was getting heated and extremely rough and swollen in some parts. So I put on my first coat of paint it was clearly a problem. Once that had dried over night I used the scotch bright pad and that took a lot of the mess down but after I started priming I found... still totally rough. So again waited over night to dry and today I wet sanded the bumper for a few hours. Feels pretty smooth now, I'm sure ill have to do a few more rounds of sanding to make it right. Once it dries ill try another layer of primer and see how it turns out. Next time I remember to get a clean OEM original paint that will be easy to scuff and paint or just get a replacement.

Found a near perfect leather wrapped steering wheel for my wifes EK, I'm very happy with that. I took like 3 hours with leather polish and towels and cleaned a ton of grot off it. Looks brand new now. Love those leather wheels, they are super solid unlike the rubber ones that you generally find.

 

Still not nearly smooth enough. I used 120 and wet sanded by hand. I put another coat of primer on and the areas where the I cut thru to the ABS are still rough. I'm thinking ill go ahead and do 2 more coats of primer and wet sand with 220 and see how it feels. I bought 3 cans of primer but it looks like I'm going to need a few more. I may just jump to 1500 but I'm not sure how well that will work. Once I am happy with the Primer I will do 3 coats of color and 3 of clear.

 

I ended up hitting it with the 1500 today and that's what it needed. Its still not perfect but much better. I was looking and thinking, even with only primer and some really thin spots this bumper already looks much better than the one on my car. I am out of primer again and honestly getting a little tired of messing with it. I think I'm going to hit it with 3 coats of color and see how it looks. Hopefully that's enough to smooth out the small issues. Im wondering if I should wet sand the color coat before hitting it with clear. Actually... I'm feeling pretty lazy I don't really want to deal with it at this point. Ill post some pics once its on the car.

 

Before I get any angry responses saying not to wetsand the base coat, I'm not going to do it. I'm feeling waay too lazy. I have done it with 2000 grit in the past on smaller parts and had good success. But I think ill do like I am with the rest of the car and just spend the time on the clear. I really just need it nice and smooth and one color. I was thinking of plastidipping it but that idea is starting to wear kind of thin, I think once its clean white and polished I will just leave it. Maybe ill start looking for a wagon and just swap everything over.

 

Rear bumper really needs replacing. Rear deck lid has a few runs in the clear but ill polish those out later when i everything is painted and i do a final wet sand.

The color looks a little off but car is dirty and the color will darken a bit as it hardens .



Here is how it turned out, its soo much better than the bumper that was on the car. I wont be embarrassed anymore. There are some minor flaws in the paint and more wet sanding and a final polish will be needed on the whole car. I spent forever getting the paint off the center section of the rear lip. the new one was damaged and I had to use the old one. It had white then black then white when overspray so it was a nightmare to get clear. I was going to do the right side as well but since the sanding has started eating thru my skin I gave up. I used a some rivet nuts to attach the bumper near the wheel on each side, I feel better having it secured well with a 10mm. The gaps are not perfect but this is not a perfect car, I just want it to be decent. I still need to paint the driver side rear quarter panel and the roof. Im not sure if I want to mess with the hood, it has a few bubbles in the paint but it matches well.

 

I was thinking about throwing a few more coats of clear on the whole car once its uniform. I was starting to think.. Maybe I can do a pearl or metal flake coat between the clear. Any thoughts on that. I was looking online and didn't see too many good examples. I saw a red flake over a white but it made it look pink. Ghost blue could look cool but maybe not on my car.

 

i know the thread is quite old, but hopefully you still have the car or atleast remember, but im looking for that buddy club bumper you posted, its sadly discontinued now, and you cant find it nearly anywhere, they still make one for the coupe/sedan, but what all fabrication work did you do to make it fit? or did it just bolt up? i want to know so that i can try to make what i want instead of buying it, but im doing what you did in reverse, i own a CE1, also again i apoligize for posting on a 6 year old dead forum, cheers!