New Additions to our Bumper & Sill Mouldings Range for Rolls-Royce and Bentley models to 1998

John introduces some of the products in the Prestige Parts Moulding range along with some additions and updates.

Anyone who follows IntroCar will see that we have already produced some of the Shadow, Silver Shadow II, Bentley T2 and Corniche quarter bumper mouldings:

• The centre moulding for the front and back fitted to the Shadow II, T2 and the Corniche.
• Rear quarter bumper for the Shadow II and T2
• Front quarter bumper fitted to the later Corniche - this is distinguished by a scallop. This is quite an unusual bumper moulding and is not fitted to many cars but it was added to the range because they were not available before we brought them back to market.

These Rolls-Royce & Bentley bumper mouldings are made from a micro cellular polyurethane which is not a rubber, it's actually a very, very dense foam. If this was under a microscope you would see it is actually a foam. Inside there is a steel insert and the way these are made is quite clever...

There is a female part of the mold underneath and then a male part which comes into the female to meet the bolts.

The steel fixture is suspended in the mould and the polyurethane is pumped in. Then it's allow to cure and then you get this assembly out of it, is quite an interesting technique. Obviously it doesn't really lend itself to mass manufacture because you can only really make one of these at a time, so quite an interesting technique.

There were some problems with the original product which really became apparent over time and the first of those was actually just plain rust! What tended to happen was water would get into a very small perforation or holes in the unit, the steel would expand as it rusted and that would tend to pull the steel insert out from the bumper, also causing it to distort.

The second thing that happened was just the effects of heat, cold and Ultra Violet (UV) light tended to cause the external part of the bumper to cure faster than the internal part. So that actually made it shrink slightly and that distorted the bumper. So you tend to find that you see a lot of cars out there where this, particularly on the rears, they tend to be pulling away from the car. Well we made a couple of changes which should get rid of those problems going forward.

The first thing is that the insert is about 50% thicker so it's stronger and it resists the tendency of this to distort over time.

The second thing is that we made this insert from stainless steel so that it won't rust so these actually should last even longer than the originals.

There are a couple of additions to the range:

• The right hand front quarter bumper fitted to all the four door Rolls-Royce and Bentley motorcars built from 1980 to about 1995 before they went to the wrap around bumper model. So that is the Silver Spirit, Silver Spur, Flying Spur, the Bentley Mulsanne, Mulsanne Turbo, Bentley Eight, Turbo R and Brooklands.
• The range of inserts which fits into the quarter bumper.
• The centre rubber which is used on the rear and the front of this same range of vehicles. It is made in a slightly different way: inside here there are little clips which actually hook into the rubber mold and so it is suspended on this.

This is a range that we are very proud of, particularly because these parts are either extremely expensive from Bentley Motors or not available. So obviously we are delighted to be bringing things like that back to market or to market at a reasonable price!