Painting a rear bumper

mhariush · mhariush's Garage

I got bumped and the rear cover flexed and cracked the paint.

I have an air compressor and I was thinking of trying to tackle painting it myself. Anyone have experience with this?

Artic Silver. Where's the best matching paint? Add flex agent? Mix in clear coat in paint or do a separate clear coat layer?

removed the bumper today. No damage behind it.

alfa11 · alfa11's Garage

The potential for disaster is not worth it.

And yes, I am a fully qualified automotive painter.

Best, Paul

Dus10R · 05-07-2014, 06:02 PM

This is an area of massive dispute... 1 out of 5 autobody shops will tell you the truth, the rest will tell you "no problem at all, we just add a flex additive to the paint and you're good to go" so yes it can be painted. Will it last? Nope. After 6 months or so you'll start to notice spider cracks appear where the damage was. The only real fix is to replace the bumper with a new one and have it painted. I tried having two different bumped bumpers repainted by two different reputable repair shops and they both failed after some months. Then I ran across two shops that do very high end cars and charge very high end prices and they were the only ones to tell me that they will only replace and paint otherwise it wont last. So its a gamble. If you can do it yourself, go for it, you're not out anything except paint cost and your own time, but I would add more flex additive than recommended. Then if it fails later you're not out big bucks, just your time.

mhariush · mhariush's Garage

It's at the body shop now, Eli's Collision Repair here in Los Angeles. It's Porsche of Beverly Hills, Audi and Mercedes' go to shop.

State Farm's estimator quoted $1500 and minus 500 for prior scratch. Eli's total, with new bumper, hopefully a Euro bumper, $4700. And I also got a Luxury rental from Enterprise, billed directly to State Farm. I wouldn't go as far as call the Lexus CT 200h a luxury car, but gets me around.

It was very nice to just drop it off at a place I know will do quality work and handle the talks with the insurance company directly. But boy did State Farm try to get away cheap. The shop just laughed at the original quote and flat out said they don't "fix" bumpers that have been in accidents. And their work is covered for life.

Now lets hope they get the euro bumper and get rid of those bumperettes