1965 rear bumper

[whatleyr]

Hello all. I want to see if anyone has any suggestions to replicate or restore my rear bumper? It is a dealership stamped bumper and it came on the truck when brand new. I need to save this if possible because it was my grandpa's truck and he purchased it from my father's dealership. It's a family thing. Any suggestions would be great. Thanks.

[vin63]

Do you know if it came painted, or did it have a galvanized-type of coating? In either case, I would remove it, and prep it for powder coating. There are some really tough coatings now with nearly every color possible.

[whatleyr]

I don't know. I asked all of my family members and no one can remember if it was painted. My grandpa did splurge and had a chrome bumper installed upon delivery so who knows. Any ideas?

[Clyde65]

Hard to tell, those bumpers were sourced locally to the dealer and probably didn’t have good paint on it ever. I would think a silver or white would be good.

[oem4me]

Im not exactly sure what the question is here. The bumper obviously needs some help in the way of some light damage and then paint. Before worrying about the finish, I'd attempt to straighten the bends and dents whether by some heavy hammer and dolly action, maybe a big c clamp or two coupled with angle iron to flatten wrinkles, etc. See if you can get it to where you like it before wasting time on anything else.
Once you are satisfied with it's shape, then remove the rust either mechanically or chemically, or both. Wire wheel, sandblast, needle scaler, all will work. Lots of rust dissolving acids are out there too.
When you finally get to paint, the vast majority were painted silver. Not anything fancy, just some random shade of silver. As long as the surface is clean and free of loose dirt and rust, squirting some color on it will make it look good. Actually, it may look too good. That is, it will stand out from the rest of the truck which is looking fairly worn.

[Captainfab]

IMO the easiest and with the best results will be to replace the diamond plate with an entire new piece. Then have it media blasted, primed and painted.

[aerotruk63]

Replace the Diamond Grid like Capt says and then a Silver paint after blasting the new assembled pieces like oem4me suggested. Nice truck with history. Can't beat that!