Hey everyone
I wanted to share my experience with a bumper repair. I bought my GS preowned and it is now close to 5 years old. It is in good shape but I have 4 kids and it gets lots of abuse in the interior. The exterior is not in that great shape either I guess. Recently my 3 year old backed up his lightning mcqueen into the drivers door and put a small dent in it. A month ago, some dude smacked the rear bumper on the 57 fwy and put two small dings from his licence plate screws. The estimate for that repair was $2100. We'll get to that in a bit. In addition, I recently smacked the front of my car on a curb that was a bit higher than expected. Needless to say I was pissed but its a car, no big deal.... Here is the pic of this damage



So......when I was getting the insurance estimate, I asked the body shop for a deal on the front bumper when they were doing the back bumper.....he said normally $980 but he would do it for half.....$500. This was to paint the entire front bumper. Not a bad deal. However, the back bumper was so minor I decided to pocket the $2100, so I was not going to get that done and then pay $500 more to get the front done. So I decided to tackle this myself.

I found the website automotivetouchuppaint.com I ordered the primer, base coat and clear coat and a sprayer handle and a pack of sanding papers with assorted grits.

I used some duct tape to remove any loose paint......



I then sanded the bumper with 180 and 300 on a 18v hand sander


Next I painted using the primer several coats 10 minutes apart




This stuff dries but is not super smooth so I used 600 grit and gently sanded and made the transition at the edge smooth and also the surface became super smooth (hand sanded)
This took literally like 5 minutes


Next I painted several coats of the basecoat



Lastly I painted the clearcoat



Final product, not a perfect match but my paint may be faded etc. Also I did not do such a great job of blending to the sides.....


I really wanted to paint all the little rock chips but really I was afraid of the match and also the finished product as blending a small area was hard enough that anything more would have been too much

Overall I am happy since I no longer have all those cracks on the paint and the the kit was like $60 shipped


There may be guys saying "come on, why go cheap on a $60k car. Well, its used, its older and its closer to 20-25k at this point. Also, the front and back was going to cost me about $2600 in repairs. The value of the car would not have increased by the $2600 I ended up pocketing and I wont freak out about a small chip here or there.

 

Your finished product looks much better than what you started with. And you saved a ton of money. And (I believe) you did not yell at your kids or yourself. What more could you ask for?

 

Looks great! Thanks for the post.

 

Good job, though as you point out you could have definitely blended it a little better.

Either way, it looks 10 times better than before and you have a whole chunk of extra change in your picket!

 

Looks great!I can do mechanical stuff and some wiring but I suck when it comes to painting.