Making Of A ROUSH Front Bumper
It takes approximately nine steps and 21 people from start to finish to manufacture the front facia for a Ford Mustang. During each step of the process, someone manually inspects the part and has the authorization to declare the quality unacceptable.
The first step in the manufacturing process is the creation of the Front Fascia. This is done on a 3300-ton injection molding machine which is larger than a typical semi truck running down the highway. In fact, just the mold for the Front Fascia by itself weighs 40,000 pounds and is nearly the size of a small car. Despite the enormous sizes and pressures involved, it takes just a couple of minutes to mold a Front Fascia once the machine is running at full capacity.
Other parts included with the ROUSH body kits, such as the Quarter Window Louvers and Hood Scoop, are produced on a smaller, but still substantial, 1760-ton injection molding machine. The Rear Spoiler, for example, is created through a unique blow mold process which allows the manufacture of hollow parts. This is critical on such a large part because it allows for greater weight reductions than a solid injection molded piece.
Most of the ROUSH body kit components are constructed from high-pressure, injection-molded TPO or ABS plastic which means that the pieces will retain their correct shape and not sag or warp over the life of the vehicle. All the compound materials used are OEM-grade ensuring the best quality and performance.
Prior to painting, each Front Fascia is manually inspected and hand sanded to remove any minor texture or flash (minute amounts of extra material) remaining from the injection molding process. Then, depending on the size of the body kit part, it will either be hand painted or in ROUSH’s 20,345 square-foot robotic paint booth.
Because the size of the Front Fascia is too large to allow uniform paint coverage by hand, it is sent through the robotic area. Each part is loaded onto a special rack which runs along a track through the five-step paint process.
Once inside the paint booth, the Front Fascia undergoes a thorough power wash to remove any remnant sanding dust or other contaminants. This is a five step process which uses treated waters and chemicals to thoroughly clean the parts inside and out. From there, the next steps are a tack-off drying procedure and the addition of an adhesion promoter, more commonly known as primer.
The base coat of paint, perfectly color matched to Ford specifications, is applied by a robotic arm which spins up, down, and around the Front Fascia as it evenly applies the paint. Rather than a set number of coats, parts are painted to a thickness measured in Mils which varies depending on the part and the place on the car that it is ultimately installed. Paint will be thicker on components such as a Chin Spoiler or Front Fascia as they will need to withstand more road damage, such as chips from small stones, than a Quarter Window Louver is expected to.
The entire paint booth is both temperature and humidity controlled, so no matter how cold the Michigan winter gets, or how humid the summer rises to, the paint is always applied in optimum conditions.
After the base color is complete a clear coat is applied and the part undergoes a bake cycle to cure the paint quickly and properly. This baking typically lasts 20 or 30 minutes, depending on the size of the part and the amount of paint coverage. From start to finish, it takes around three and a half hours for the total paint process to be completed.
Once out of the paint booth, the parts all pass through a viewing area with 13 high-intensity lights in an arch spanning several feet wide. Here they are hand inspected for any paint flaws, and if passed, go to another area where they are buffed and polished by hand.
“Every single part is inspected for any cosmetic issues prior to the buffing process,” said Bob Nicosia, operations director of ROUSH Manufacturing. “After that they are hand polished to perfection.”