Thanks to everyone who answered my queries about Touch up paint? a week or two ago. Now I've noticed some worse scrapes at the bottom sides of the front panel (where the bumper would appear on most cars). They are a few inches long, up to about half an inch wide, and black (my car is silver). The underlying substance feels like rubber or plastic--the dealer says rubber. The dealer had three ideas--have the guy who does the touch ups on their used cars do it, probably for under a hundred bucks, get a body shop involved for much more, or do it myself. When I asked if I should sand the thing, he suggested that would make it worse--I should just paint over, even though it feels a bit rough. Any suggestions, gang?
It's most likely a kind of Polyurethane. If the dealer can have his touchup guy do it for about $100, I'd check out his work and probably go for it. It will probably need to be filled with a patching compound used on these bumpers then painted. Depending on how low on the car the scrapes are, how visible they are and your tolerance for (im)perfection, the touchup guy may just work. A body shop could easily get 3X or 4X the cost..... Good luck!
I'd still be betting it's a kind of urethane..... The scrapes seem a bit deep and filler may be required. There are guys out there that do pretty decent patch jobs on dealers' cars, so I'd be checking out the offer from yours to have their guy look at it. You might also check eBay, as I've seen a number of bumper covers available in your color with less damage (sometimes under the front license bracket) that would cost about $250 shipped. If you can do the swap yourself it would cost considerably less than what the average body shop would charge to repair and repaint your original cover. Just a thought.......
