Hello gentlemen,

I recently got rear-ended and luckily the only damage was to my bumper. It got bent out of place a little bit and there are a few small chips on the left side. My question is about the chips. The appraiser is coming in the next few days to give an estimate. I'm wanting to tell him I want the bumper resprayed considering how hard it is to match paint. Does this seem reasonable from the pics? What would you guys do? If you guys think it can be touched up and matched well enough I won't bother, but I'm pretty OCD about things like this. Others may not notice but I'll always know that a defect is there.

 

Shoot for the re-spray. That's what i would do anyways.

 

If the bumper got bent I'd shoot for a replacement.

 

x3 that'd bug me too... oh wait it already does (the last owner put a couple dings in my bumpers)

 

It's hard to tell because the damage isn't too severe, but I think the bumper just got bent down a little bit. I don't think the bumper itself is bent..it's just out of place. I'll talk to the appraiser and see if I can just get a replacement. It would be much easier than having to wait to get it repaired.

 

A good body shop can fix that no problem. It should not be that expensive.

 

Okay well the appraiser met me at work today and took a look. I know now why it's his job to do what he does. I missed a few things previously...

1) The bumper was bent and warped, especially on the underside. It struck my hitch in a weird place so nonetheless it has to be replaced completely.

2) One of the mounting brackets was bent.

3) The far left side of the bumper (where it wraps back around the truck) hit my side panel on the bed. It made an extremely small chip, which is going to cost them a lot. He said the body shops can do a touch-up on the paint because it's in such an inconspicuous place, but they'd have to clear the entire panel. If they didn't the clear wouldn't match and would start to peel eventually.

Basically, because of a chip no bigger than a cutip's end, they have to remove all the moldings from that side of the bed, the gas cap, my custom FX4 decal, and I have to take my new bed cover off. Went from a 1-day bumper replacement to a 3-4 day repair.

Total Cost Estimate: $1,381. Good thing it's not my insurance, but nonetheless...

 

Yeah, I work as an adjuster and write up appraisals on vehicle. I was going to say if there are any chips on the paint, it's just written up to repaint the whole thing. If there was an adjacent panel (there is not in this case) their would be blend time on that panel. Then the kicker to all that is that all the trim pieces need to be R and I'ed and in some cases, replaced.

Oh, sorry... I just reread your post. There is a chip on the 1/4 panel. So they do need to do as I mentioned above.

Do this... let the shop know that you want the bed rail replaced if the clips break... you don't want to them to use 2 sided tape. Of course this is personal preference but it was help on with clips before so it should be that way when they get done. Two sided tapes does hold very well but still.

$1400 sounds pretty cheap. Though with the main paint being on the rear of the 1/4 panel I don't think they need to set back the bed.

 

I wouldn't have even thought that they'd throw double sided tape on there. Thanks for the heads up!




Few more pics of the damage. Seems it's about time to go wash the truck. Hard to believe that tiny little paint chip in the last picture can cause so much ruckus: