Been trying to source an OEM small plate rear bumper for my '88 civic ef sedan for ages now.. they are extremely rare and can't seem to find one anywhere.. Only thing keeping me from doing a full respray. Maybe someone can redirect me to a site? Photo below for reference of the rear bumper.

 

"Filler" piece/panel/trim are the keywords to search for. Here's a right side pretty cheap https://www.ebay.com/itm/27478623824...0AAOSwL0Nf9eGP

 

I'm not really sure how this goes into or fits the stock bumper? Would be greatly appreciated if someone clears things out

 

This request needs proper perspective. Honda revised their bumper for different markets, (but it should also be said that the trim recess along near the top edge varied according to year and model spec. with some not having a recess, some a moulded recess and some JDM sedan models actually having a chromed or painted trim piece to go in that recess) .

For many markets the number plates were too wide for the JDM & USA bumper recess. & Hondas effort to resolve that wasn't pretty.


ED civic JDM-USA bumper


ED bumper euro
Honda's messy bodge to mount wide number plates to the rear bumper. For the much wider European No. plates they'd cut a big hole in their plastic bumpers, bolted a large & unnecessarily complicated steel mounting bracket to the body & screwed a finishing trim to the bumper to (badly) fill the gap between the two.

I didn't like Honda's solution but our plates were about 1" too wide so I came up with my own solution on my hatch.


Cast recess.
I had a JDM bumper with the proper plate recess so took a plaster cast with plaster soaked hessian.
I realized the JDM recess was also angled to point upward with large holes for lights (that I'd filled with card before plastering), creating an unnecessarily deep recess that also tended to obscure the plate when viewed at an angle so the recess was filled with packing-tape covered cardboard to a more appropriate angle and cast again!
Cut that down the middle and separated the halves to an appropriate width (I'd cast in some PVC tubes to reinforce the cast which provided sliding rails) and painted it with shellac before bridging the gap between the two halves with packing tape.


Fibreglass from mould
Laid a little fiberglass into the mould while it was mounted in the old bumper.
I then decided to edit that shape further to enlarge the recess upward to the edge of the hole cut in the bumper (rather than leave a thin strip of my recess panel between this edge and the plate recess.), provide an appropriately angle surface to mount new No. plate lights on, and 'french' in the lower edge of the recess. So I built up my mould with some more tape wrapped card. I mounted this mould onto the outside of my old bumper and heavily waxed the lot before laying some fibreglass & resin into the mould & over the edges of the cutout in the bumper.
Much body-filler, sanding & painting later this was glued into an old bumper with white Sikaflex adhesive and some LED strip light stuck on with double sided tape to light the plate.


New recess filler fitted
The cut-out edge of the old bumper recess is still visible but the new bumper recess panel is obviously a vast improvement upon Honda's effort
After that I made a second one for my other hatch with a slightly less recessed mounting area.