Well, you have a few choices when you get a dent or scrape in your plastic bumper on whom to get to repair it. Depending on which way you go will make the decision on how much the repair will cost you. You always have the local body shop that you can take your car into and have them charge you a possible arm and a leg to get a simple small repair done.

Well really, the first thing you need to take into consideration when deciding who to have repair your plastic bumper is just how big of a dent is it? They have these places that are a SMART repair specialist. These technicians will repair your car where you work; they come to you and fix the car.

It’s really cool that they fix the damage right in front of you, so it’s like they are basically a mobile body shop for your car. This service also works great with those dings that you receive in any shopping centre complex. Plus if you want to sell your vehicle this is a great service to think about getting, because a car that has less dents and dings and paint damage will get more money than one that looks scruffy.

So this SMART repair technician can come to the place where you work, and easily fix your bumper scuff within say 30 to 50 minutes if they have been doing it for a while. But even if it takes them a bit longer, the time and money you save on having to take your vehicle into the body shop is a tremendous savings all by itself.

Or if you want to try and do it yourself you can get some bonding agent and put in onto the damage and wait for it to dry and sand it until it’s even, and make sure that you match the contours of the bumper with the new agent you have on your car. It will take a while to get it sanded to the right spot most likely. You will need to ensure that it is smooth and looks okay too. You don’t want a potential buyer being able to see where you just got done fixing damage in your bumper.

So after you have it sanded to the right contours you will need to get a primer and put that on the bonding agent, and really a few inches around it so as to match the paint a bit easier. If you don’t do this, it may be fairly easy to see the new paint compared to the old paint. This will of course make the price of your vehicle go down too.

So you have the bumper primed, and you have the paint that will match the original paint on your vehicle. Now is the fun part of painting. You need to make sure that you do it just right and that you don’t have any drip marks on it. Let it dry and you should be pretty much done.

But heck, why go to all that trouble when you can simply call a SMART repair technician and have them fix it?

1. Remove the plastic that needs to be repaired and prep the bumper scuff area by cleaning it with a surface cleaner designed for plastic surfaces. Rinse off the cleaner, let it dry and then wipe the scuff with a prep solvent. When applying the prep solvent make sure that you are only moving in a single direction.

2. When the solvent is dry, sand the area and then form a v shaped groove into the damaged area both on the back and front fascia sides. This “v” shape will let you line up the two edges

3. Mix together the repair tears and the adhesive. Sometimes you might need to hold the repair together with masking tape on the fasciaÂ’s front side. If you like, you can add self stick fibreglass repair tape to add some structure to the area that you are repairing. The adhesive and hardener need to have equal amounts in the mixture. You will apply two layers, the second layer at a ninety degree angle to the first layer.

4. After the mixture has hardened (this can take around twenty minutes), take off the tape you applied to the front of the fascia and use sandpaper to get rid of any of the mixture that might have squeezed through and sand down any places that are above the finished fascia level. Use the repair mixture to fill any crevices or lowered spots on the fasciaÂ’s front and use a squeegee to level it off.

5. After the mixture on the front size of the fascia has hardened, sand it down to make sure that the bumper is level. Use eighty grit sandpaper first and follow it with one hundred twenty grit sandpaper. Apply a lighter coat of the repair mixture to fill any imperfections on the surface and to restore the bumpers contour and then sand that down with four hundred grit sandpaper that is wet.

6. When the bumper scuff has been repaired, you can paint it. After applying a part sealer and letting it dry, you can prime the bumper with two coats of primer surfacer (let the first coat dry before applying the second. After that, you can spray the paint onto the repaired bumper scuff. After it is dry, add a mixture of clear coat and hardener, and when everything is dry you can put the bumper back onto the car.

Of course, if this all seems like too much work, or if you arenÂ’t sure this is a process you should do by yourself, the technicians at LVV services are standing by and ready to fix your bumper scuff for you. LVV will send one of its SMART educated technicians out to your home to fix your bumper scuff. This is far more affordable than sending your car to a full auto body repair shop (which could say that you need to replace the whole bumper) and a lot easier than trying to repair your bumper scuff yourself!

When you scratch or dent your car, removing the paint in the process, you have five options regarding the car paint repair from which to choose.

The first option – primarily for more extensive damage – is to take your car to a car paint repair specialist (body shop or crash repair centre) to fix the damage and repaint the affected area. Usually this type of car paint repair job can take several days.

The second option – primarily for minor damage (and if the car paintwork is not damaged) – is to have a paint less dent removal technician work on it, which will be much faster, cheaper and convenient as their mobile service personnel can come to you at a suitable time, rather than you going to them during your working hours.

The third option is to use a SMART repair technician (small to medium area repair technique) as these car paint repair technicians specialise in minor repairs such as bumper scuffs and small scratches.

The fourth option is to attempt to do the car paint repair job yourself, although this only solves the car paint repair, not the actual dent or scratch itself. It goes without saying that if youÂ’re not experienced in this type of work; you could end up doing more harm than good, with a result that is a lot worse than when you started!

And the fifth option is to do nothing and leave it as it is. Of course, that doesn’t really solve anything, but it doesnÂ’t cost you anything either. However, it is recommended that you at least touch in” any scratches to prevent rust forming.

Which method of car paint repair you choose depends on several different factors: the cost, the make of the car, the extent of the damage, and your car insurance cover?

If you don’t have much money, then the first car paint repair option is eliminated. However, if your car is a Porsche, where the paint job comprises 21 different stages to ensure its durability, you may find the first car paint repair option the only viable one available for major damages.

If the extent of the damage is minor, then the second or third car paint repair options become the most practical, although the rather primitive touching-up method will always show much more so than the method of paint less dent removal followed by touching in, which is designed to disguise the damage to almost invisible. It is important to note that paintless dent removal is largely used when there is very minor or no paint damage.

Whichever method you choose, it is still hard to believe that the paint used in car paint repair today originated from a substance comprised of items such as berries, blood, plants, soot and ash, during the cave men era.

As the demand for vehicle paint increased dramatically, technologists were commissioned to discover faster ways of applying paint to automobiles. The three days needed for the numerous coats of standard paint to dry was hampering supply and a damaged car needing car paint repair was taking almost as long as a new one to finish!

Aside from perfecting the spray gun so that greater quantities of paint could be more accurately and evenly dispersed over the shell of a car, “dilatable paint resins incorporating water were produced. These were more environmentally-friendly than previous ones, releasing water into the atmosphere upon drying instead of organic solvents and are still the ones used today.

Later, tiny metallic pieces which when administered would only be a depth of 15 microns (15 millionths of a metre) were added as well as pigments to the paints to vary the car paint palette and choice of car paint repair materials.

To finish, a clear coat of protective resin was introduced over the paintjob to seal in the paint, add to durability, and give it that lustrous shine.

This explains why when you take your car to a garage it takes so long, why paint less dent removal is such good value, and why when you do a touch up ”car paint repair job yourself, it looks so noticeably different from the original manufacturer’s paintjob.

Ultimately, the idea is to try to avoid needing car paint repair by driving safely and carefully, whilst still enjoying your pride and joy on the roads.

With the everyday wear and tear placed on vehicles these days, it should come as no surprise that cracked bumpers are a normal occurrence. That is not to say that it’s something desired by vehicle owners. In fact, it is one of those necessary evils of vehicle ownership.

In 1925 front and back bumpers on cars were considered standard equipment. Those first bumpers were installed in a fairly simple manner. Basic attachment placed the bumpers onto the cars via pre existing metal beams. Modern technology has dramatically changed the look and assembly of car bumpers today.

Originally, the bumper served a purpose of protecting the vehicle from impact. Today, that function has been altered to include protection for the driver as well. In addition the new plastic bumpers on the market now are aesthetically pleasing to designers and drivers as well.

Plastic car bumpers are created from thermoplastic olefins (TPO’s), polycarbonates, polyesters, polypropylene, polyurethanes, polyamides or a blend of each of these materials. Added to the mixture are glass fibers. This mixture gives the bumpers strength and structural rigidness.

Through this creation mixture, designers are afforded the luxury of having an open canvas to work with in terms of plastic bumper design. Plastic maintains a high level of flexibility to it allowing for shaping and structural templates. These bumpers can easily be assembled for a new vehicle or efficiently make improvements to an existing vehicle.

Outside of the aesthetic appeal of plastic bumpers, there is a certain safety element factored into the design. Plastic allows for an impact-resistant setting through the various reinforcements placed into the design. Like their metal counterparts, plastic bumpers expand and contract within a short time frame as the vehicle moves down the road. No additional materials are needed to hold a plastic bumper into place once it is adhered to the vehicle.

A growing trend in plastic car bumpers is for a majority of the material to be recyclable. By doing so, manufacturers can utilize left over pieces from a series of bumpers for the creation of an entirely new plastic bumper. This is a cost effective production aspect of bumper development.

Going one step further, plastics found in salvage yards and landfills can be broken down by scraping off paint and reworked into the production of a new plastic bumper. These 100% recycled bumpers function with the same safety and production of brand new plastic bumpers.

Given that plastic is easily worked with, cracked plastic car bumper repair is a relatively inexpensive process. Many auto body shops can repair the cracked bumper without having to remove it from the car body. Cars are sprayed with an epoxy material mainly in the section of the bumper that contains the crack. The crack is then repaired and the section is painted to match the color of the rest of the car. Average cracked plastic car bumper repairs can be done in a short period of two to three hours. Costs for the repair depend on the severity of the crack in the bumper.