[nail-z-gull]

After a rather glorious day at Donington Park watching the BTCC yesterday, I was making my way out of the car park. Being parked in a field I had a job getting back to the approach road due to the way other cars had parked. When I found the road I failed to realise just how steep the curb was - and as I crept back on to the road there was an almight scraping noise. This was probably made worse by the crowd of onlookers reeling back with horror and having 'Ooooh - that sounded expensive' look on their faces.

I finally plucked up the courage to take a look today and it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. However there are a number of scratches on the underside of the bumper below the bottom grill. They're not really visible unless you crouch down and get a good look underneath - but I know they're there.

I've tried polishing a lot of them out but there are a couple of deep scratches which have taken the paint down to the bare plastic. I don't know whether to get this repaired or not. The car is a year old and so far has been very good to me - but all the paint is obviously original. Repaint jobs are never as good as factory paint and I expect to repair this area would require the whole bumper to be repainted. I'm contemplating just a touch up job.

Anybody else have experience of getting damaged bumpers repaired?

 

[lordy]

To spray a bumper properly, you would have to do the whole bumper, as blending in is nigh on impossible. Having said that, the scratches are so low down, that you might get away with it because it isn't in a particularly visible spot, and that section of the bumper is very narrow. As with most of these things, you need a recommendation from someone for a decent paint sprayer. These 'Ding to Blng', or 'Chips Away' type franchises are very hit and miss. A friend of mine had the bonnet of his Eos scratched quite badly by his eight year old son pusing his bike past it. He asked Ding to Bling to sort it, and to cut a long story short, he made such a dog's dinner of it, he ended up having the whole bonnet re sprayed afterwards.

 

[SKIDOO]

You know what they say Nail - 'If you want a good job doing - do it yourself' Like lordy says it sound so low down that you might just as well have a go at it yourself. The colour is probably a bit darker down there already due to it not being directly in the sun.
Gary