my plastic lip kept on deforming. i remember kinda parking too close to the curb one time and that may have deformed it. but could it also be from the engine heat?

 

I wouldn't think much, if any, engine heat gets to the lip or the bumper covers, etc. Have you felt the lip to see if it's hot? If I had to guess, I would say that a combination of old age, weather and curb rubbing, etc. possibly contribute to it doing that. I just used to have a factory lip on my Civic and it had a lot of scrapes and a few white streaks on it, probably from rubbing curbs.

 

i mean if it's solely from curbing, then i could just get a heat gun and mold it back to shape and watch out not to curb again, but if it's otherwise, then it's kinda pointless to keep doing the heat gun application and just remove the darn thing

 

Unfortunately, the plastic Toyota used for the front lip of the 92-94 SC was soft and they deformed rather easily just due to age and curbage. It's not due to engine heat but just from the hot/cold climates. The plastic appears to stretch over time and lose their shape. I used a heat gun to try molding the lip back into decent shape, but it ends up stretching the plastic more and leaving it more out of shape once it cools and contracts. Also, there are thin metal braces behind the lip that keep the shape against the bumper, those bend easily and if you hit a curb hard enough, it will bend and the only way is to remove the lip and bend those metal braces back into shape.

 

Interesting. I guess I won't be getting a lip from the 92-94 then; not sure what years they made lips for but I would assume other years. I wonder if they improved it if they made lips for 95+..

 

They deleted the lip for the 95+ models.

 

hmmm...then can you explain how on some vehicle the lip appears immaculate? thx

 

mine is perfect and has touched its share of parking stoppers...

 

mine looks fine, except for the vertical crack on the drivers side from coming out of my driveway, which is a huge angle. im thinking about making a new one out af ABS plastic, i havent worked to hard on it yet though