Just like vthree's Friday the 13th wreck, I too experienced some bad luck, although many many magnitudes less severe than his unfortunate and sad wreck. This was my fault though.

Last summer my parents were in town and that's when I was blindsided by a minivan to the tune of a $6500 insurance job. This weekend my parents were in town for the first time since then, and I was picking up my daughter from daycare with my mom (she hadn't seen her grand-daughter in a few months). I didn't notice that their driveway had an ice chunk stuck to the sidewalk right at the curb. Bring lowered and with an OEM lip kit, I scraped the front passenger side (what I thought was lightly). This was the result:



The bumper cracked (new bumper from the insurance job last time), OEM skirt scuffed but only on at the bottom (not visible unless you're looking up at it from the ground). One tab (top) broken on the bumper.

ARGH!!

A guy I know who works at a body shop about 40km from me can probably fix it and repaint the area for $200 as a cash side-job. Luckily I found two pieces of bumper that had broken off from underneath, so he can supposedly use that to "weld" the crack back together with a soldering iron.

Piss me off though... brand new bumper and flawless paint, and now a nice crack in it. Grrr...

 

damn that sucks bro... gluck with the repairs tho

 

oy this is why ididn't drive that night.

Good luck on the fix.

 

little bit of superglue and she'll be back to normal....


Sorry to hear.

 

Don't fix it !

Look on ebay if you are going the cheap way and get a used one.


If you fix it it will just crack again, probably wont last a week seen how you are lowered.

 

Used bumpers from car-part.com (continental wrecking-yard database) show only a few, mostly well over $200, and even those have damage and would also need full painting. That brings the price to probably over $600 with shipping and paint and labour.

I'd rather try my luck fixing it. Looked a bit more into it and it's called "plastic braising" and is quite common, and if done correctly can last forever.

This is the first time I've scraped anything major w/ this car lowered in over 1.5 years.

 

Plastic welding thermoplastics is tricky and sometimes puts an odd bend or miss-formation in the panel, and tends to be weaker at the point of origin, If you are comfortable with that then go for it, Ive seen it done many times, but would never do it to my car.

 

I'll see what the guys think when they see it and prod them a lot about its durability after being fixed, etc. I'll even ask for a few layers of fiberglass to back it and make it stronger if they can do it.

 

Go some where that has real experience and real plastic welding equipment. The biggest thing in doing it right is using the right temperature. A soldering iron is way to hot and will burn the plastic leaving the repair brittle and full of little holes that will be visible when it's sanded down.

The surface will most likely be deformed to some extent. Most of the time you can't even tell unless you know where to look. It only really shows up when you look at the reflection.

 

So I fianlly got aroudn to getting it looked at in-person by a few people. The guy who said $200 now says $500, as the compound to "meld" plus tri-coat paint, would be $300 alone. Then I went to a place that does plastic brazing and also does paintless dent removal. They had removed some severe dents and creases from my wifes' car and the result was PERFECT on those, so his estimate of $400 cash for this job sounds pretty good. One-day turnaround, but I have to remove the bumper and the OEM lip.

Anyone know how hard it is to remove the OEM lip, seeing as though it's also taped to the bumper? I don't want to ruin the paint when removing it.

 

just a heads up, tomorrow is friday the 13th also.
i had pretty bad luck these few days, i will just sleep through my friday.

as for removing the front lip, i am not so worried about ruining the paint, but to put it back, you need to find those thin thin thin 3M double side tapes to replace the old one.

 

I'm guessing I can get that at any body shop. But removing it shouldn't be a problem? I'm thinking that the warmer the better... so maybe I heat the areas up with a hair dryer before trying to peel it off?

 

ya or just leave it under the sun for like 2 hrs, it should be hot enough :p

btw, when i had to respray my trunk, my bodyshop was retarded and used thick-ass tape to put on my A emblem in the back, i had to take it off and go back to dealer tell them its loose, please fix for me lol. bodyshop said that was the best they could do

 

I see you're in Orange County, CA, and probably haven't been to Ottawa, Ontario before, right? It gets to a daytime high of about 40*F here at this time of year. In the sun. I'll try the hairdryer method if I need to get it off myself.

 

oops, didnt notice your location. :p

 

damn, good luck...