Go to a hardware store, buy a rattle can of white paint that is specifically formulated to be flexible after painting - vinyl paint I think they call it - and mask and spot paint. For crying out loud - it's a bumper. Something else is going to bang into it and then what?
Your neighborhood auto paint shop can set you up with the right stuff. They probably have it in spray cans and I have found the paint specialty stores to be very helpful.
Thats a high price it seems. I just paid $370 to repaint the hood and cowl on a 93 Explorer, that's a strip to bare metal, prime, paint with color tint and clearcoat. Looks mint now. To be fair though, those plastic bumpers require different prep steps to strip it and it is far more contoured. It may not be a fair comparison.
I bet your price is high due to high labor cost. If you could remove the bumper yourself and bring it in to the shop a-la-carte then the price would be mich lower. Few or no body shop will just touch up the section and still offer a warranty. To get it to look good, you have to paint the whole thing and that takes prep.
Did you try Maaco, they have better prices than typical body shops and may be willing to just do a tape up, sand smooth and feather in job.
Heck maybe you can find a used bumper off a car with a wrecked front end at a pick and pull lot, call around, can't hurt to ask.
pipedown.....dittos on the xtra cost on a plastic bumper. I pranged my Chrysler last year, leaving a dimple in the corner of the bumper.. couldn't live with it so took it to the body shop. $1100 (!!!!) I asked if there wasn't any way to save the old bumper to keep the cost down and he sez that IS saving the old bumper....a new one would be $3000. The numbers came off his computer program - not off the top of this head......a lot of labor over 3 days to remove bumper, heat it up to work out the dimples, filler, prep and lots of layers of various kinds of finish. Of course, one that isn't dimpled or require removal should be less. (BTW, I traded the car in 5 months later - for $1400 - but it was a pretty car and I couldn't stand to drive it around with that bumped bumper. The new car has back-up alarm!).
Patient Guy wrote in news:Xns9AABB0531931FUVAA@207.115.17.102:
It's neoprene, same as they've been using since 1978.
Sand the scratch out starting with 400 papaer, then 600. Just sand out the rough spots, not down into the yellow neoprene material. Use a degreasing agent. Shoot a bit of primer on, then the correct auto touch up paint for your car's color. That scratch is so minor I wouldn't even worry about using a flex agent in the paint.
$600? Yeah, they trade a bit of knowledge against your lack of it. That job would take them 15 minutes, top. $2400 an hour for the shop. Nice profit margin.
You can get the supplies you need at any good auto parts store that sells automotive paint and prep supplies to the body shops. The paint is regular auto paint with a special flex additive so it won't crack and fall off as easily. The prep supplies are standard and widely available. And the counter person can offer suggestions on materials and techniques to use, where the mail-order shop might not know where to go.
If you live in Southern California or certain other areas you have to deal with the smog laws and will have to buy a HVLP spray system and deal with special low-volatility paints and supplies. A lot of water-based paints and supplies to cut the solvent content.
The reason they quote so much is the labor - it takes a lot of hand labor to fix bodywork properly, and time is money.
The proper materials are a very small fraction of the total cost - where you'll get bit for money is buying the proper tools and durable supplies for the job - an air compressor, air-powered body sanders, paint spray guns, hoses and air filters, rubber hand-sanding blocks, sanding sponges, an assortment of wet-dry sandpaper grades for all the sanders, etc. Don't try to skimp, you really can't do a good prep job without them.
If there are no dents in the bumper cover just buff it out, fill any big scratches, prime, and paint fading out to the undamaged paint around the owie. If there is a visible dent left you have to warm it up and pop it out, or fill it in, or both.
If you hit something hard, you may have damaged the foam energy absorbing blocks or the steel bumper beam under the beauty cover. You may have to take the bumper cover off, then fix the under-bumper structural bits, then put the cover back on and fix the paint. The only really critical part is the final painting - which you can get done for cheap by a professional "Shooter" at the local body shop if you have done all the prep work and it's all ready to shoot, and you hand them a quart of paint all mixed with the flex additive in it.
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