How to Repair a Scuffed or Damaged Car Bumper for less than $100

okay today you guys we're gonna be repairing this bumper right here on my wife's 2008 toyota highlander i won't call any names but obviously somebody backed into some concrete so what some let's take a look at again how we can fix this all right before we go any further I get into this repair I've got to start by by giving you basically two warnings to this disclaimer before we go for one I want to know I have no experience doing bodywork whatsoever I have no experience painting cars I'm not even good at painting mattified I hate painting I hate painting rather it be a wall in the house or or something simple I'm not good at painting don't like it you have no enjoyment out of it the second thing is I probably did a hundred things wrong in this video I watched tons of videos I read tons of articles online on how to do each step of this i watch the videos from the manufacturer of these products and the one thing I've concluded is that when it comes to painting a car and bodywork apparently there's a bunch of wrong ways but there's not necessarily a right way because there are industry veterans who've been doing this for 30 and 40 years who argue with each other like children on YouTube videos and websites saying that's not how you should do it and um and I don't know I don't know the right answer so I probably had a ton of things wrong that's fine you judge by yourself the end result from someone who's never done this and had nobody helping him other than watching some videos on YouTube and hopefully this will show you that even if you're as clueless as I am when it comes to the bodywork and painting that you know maybe you can tackle a project like this yourself so you be the judge but don't throw any hate mail my way I've told you I don't know what I'm doing so it might not be perfect but it is what it is and we'll go from here so what's good started alright enough of that so let's start by just washing the area that we're gonna be repairing so it's just soap and water I'm just gonna clean it up and you'll see a lot of these videos I'm gonna speed up so you don't have to watch it especially boring parts or repetitive parts they're just gonna clean it up and wash it and then before we go much further I'm gonna take some 180 grit sandpaper and I'm just going to sand the area down now all of this stuff I got from automotive touch-up calm they're not paying me not a review just don't know this online at this website that that had the perfect color match and all that so you know shout out to automotive touch-up comm so just some 180 grit sandpaper just gonna sand the area down I've got to get all that plastic pitting and it's okay if there's pits in there but you can't have any plastic protruding so I've got a rough all that off I saw some people use their razor blade so here's the final result after me sanding it and getting a smooth I'm using this bondo bumper repair kit to be honest I ended up haven't used two of these kits but it's basically just just an epoxy it's two parts you mix them together and it's this nice black rubber and um I bought some little spreader blades as well these little ones that came with a little bondo kit as well so again I bought one kit from automotive touch-up pen I wasn't enough had to run down to Autozone and get a second one because of this repair I didn't know how much to buy to start late so you live and learn and it's really just kind of like sheetrocking a wall or anything else I figured like I do it everything in life if a little bits good and too much is even better so I'm sure I put more than I needed on all of these areas but I figured you could always sand it down so spread that over all the gaps and then I'll speed this part up as I had to had to go and get my second kit and again not much to this is pretty easy and you get the sanded down this smooth it out later so if you make a mistake here I don't think that's a big deal you can always come back so we get all of this on here and I will warn you this stuff even it even when it's dry I feel like it still had a little bit of tacked to it I even doubled the drying time and I still feel like a little bit attacked to it so then I'm going to come back I'm just gonna dry sand it and this is what my 180 sandpaper again so I just went back in dry sin to the whole area to kind of get it as smooth as I could and then that's the 180 sandpaper I used so this is what it looked like I threw our dry sanded it now I'm going to take some 320 and I'm going to wet sand the area and get it as smooth as possible so that we can get it prepared and ready to basically prime so 182 ruffs and it it's in some 380 from 322 kind of get to get nice and smooth so here's our final result now here's some prep solvent which again I got from the same company and my understanding of prep solvent is it's really just some probably overpriced liquid that you pay for that's designed to make sure there's no dirt and grease because obviously grease and oil and all that stuff will stop the paint from adhering so that's what that is I got a little clean cloth so use the prep solvent to make sure there's absolutely no grease or oil on there that would that would stop any sort of or causing it sort of adhesive adhesive process when when we get to some later steps and then once we get that finished we have to go back with some 1,000 grit sandpaper this is per the can of I'm be using some adhesion promoter and it recommended that you dry sand with 1000 grit sandpaper before applying the adhesion promoter which my understanding that he's a promoter is something you generally just use on bumpers plastic bumpers and such it helps the paint and primer stick to it a lot better and you generally don't have to use this on metal part so again my understanding you can be the judge yourself when you see the final result so basically just roughing it up with some 1000 grit sandpaper which helps out it that um adhesion promoter to bind to the bumper as well as possible and I did see some videos that show if you don't use it he's an promoter a lot of times that's when you get the peeling which is very common on bumpers and things such as that so we'll give it a try again I'm winging all of this and um you'll notice that I did this entire process outside I wish I could do it in my garage I could the lighting and my garage stinks and I just haven't invested and in some lights that would allow me to do this inside the garage which I know would have a lot more a lot less dust and be a lot easier to do a lot of this so unfortunately one day maybe I can do that right now it's just you're only not a.m. it's not feasible for me so you'll see I'm doing this outside which makes this even more difficult because I'm battling the wind and dirt and dust being blown around so anyway we've sanded at 1,000 just washed it down again you'll see I went taped off the area just with some cheap painter's tape I had in some plastic grocery bags going back with some prep solve it making sure I don't have any grease oil or anything like that on there before we spray this down made sure to let it dry I'm taking this little tack rag I got also from the same places a bondo tack rag but I got it from the automotive touch-up website if they want to maybe mail me some what boxes of cash or something I'm happy to take that but otherwise I just want you to see that you can probably do this at home so here's the adhesion promoter it recommends two coats approximately five minutes apart so I'm just gonna spray this down and before you comment that I really should have take off more of the car as you can see I did not tape off another car and I also mentioned I know what I was doing so second coat but yeah I didn't tape off enough for the car you'll see the results of that later in this video and it was easy to fix oh it wasn't that big a deal so let the adhesion promoter dry gonna throw this tack rag on it again again if you never use a tack rag and I know this may sound stupid but I haven't it's just a really kind of unusually sticky rag it's kind of crazy I mean it kind of gets on your fingers too but it's designed to pick up any dust dirt or anything that's left on there but without leaving anything behind so now let's prime it now this primer I'm using it recommended three coats approximately five to ten minutes between coats so you'll see exactly that now normally I read that you should sand the area before you prime it but from what I read on their website if you'll a done that and he's that he's an promoter you should not sand it you spray the primer directly over the adhesion promoter maybe that's right maybe it's wrong again don't know that's what the manufacturer recommended so that's what we'll go with and I don't know the long-term results of this it's been on the car for three months and looks pretty good maybe long-term it should have done something differently but let's get our three coats of a primer on there I'm just I'll actually like this process because now I feel like I look pretty good so now I'm going to wet sand with some 600 grit sandpaper and this was actually one of the recommendations before you put your base coat on it did recommend that you wet sand the area with 600 so that's what we're doing yeah having never done this before this was actually kind of a it was kind of nerve-wracking that I got the car to this extent which you know passed the point of no return but it was really really cool in my opinion to watch the transformation from you know the nasty bumper to now at least it's nice and smooth obviously it's gray and very tacky trashy looking but it is what it is so wash it down we're gonna use a tack rag make sure we don't have any dirt or dust on there and you'll see the make sure you don't have any water that sneaks in here either that was a lesson I wear in the hardware hard way so now we're doing the base coat the first base coat and the base coat that that they um that I got from them recommended two coats or more waiting five to ten minutes in between and the kind of the funny part about this video is this video took me several days to do so I ended up having my wife ended up having to drive around with her car like this a few times but I just didn't have the time to complete all this in one day especially waiting on the different things that dry so it is what it is so let's get a couple couple coats of our base coat down and again you can see the base coat overspray just going on other parts of the car my mistake won't do that again easy cleanup though if you if you do get over spray primer that rubbing compound that you'll see me using in and the and the buffer I got took it right off it really wouldn't even at much effort at all so the overspray you see on the right hand side there no problem the polishing compound and a little bit of elbow grease you can get that right off so now we've got some got our base coat on there and you know in my opinion it looks a lot better maybe he doesn't have the gloss or the rest of the car but at least it's not you don't have the torn up look to it with the plastic actually pieces of plastic actually hanging off I actually found a lot of this process to be fairly enjoyable so now we have our last base coat on it is dry this is probably a different day I'm certain it is and today we're going to be putting our first coat of clear coat on there which again the clear coat recommendations were at least three to four coats waiting 10 to 15 minutes in between so we wipe it down the tack rag and then I'm gonna take my clear coat that came and we're gonna throw several coats of that on here and I do not know what these diamonds are that you see in this video I notice that later I think either maybe something had gotten either it's I think it's the Sun reflecting off of something because you'll notice it goes away as I move around as if I'm standing in the shadow but those trust me those little diamonds you see are not on the car so let's get some clear coat on there and here's what we have so this is after the clear coat and I don't know if you can see this but it's got some orange peel to it which I had to look up later I wasn't real thrilled with the result at this point when I knew that I wasn't necessarily done but it had some orange peel and you can see it doesn't match up perfectly so recommendations for orange peel at least one of the thousand I found was to take a little bit of 1500 grit sandpaper well your son rides his scooter and hosts the water hose for you he's running his purple scooter by the way too so just gonna wet sand with some 1500 grit sandpaper and this was this was recommended for two things if you have orange peel which apparently everybody doesn't get if you have orange peel this is recommended and even if you don't have orange peel which you want to increase the gloss you've put three or four coats of clear coat but you don't have the gloss that you won't they recommend that you wet sand with 1500 and you can see that once we wet sanded and washed it it looks horrible you know he's like wow it looked pretty good now you've had me sand it and it looks horrible after the 1500 but don't fret it's weird it's um there's something really scary to me and bothersome about throwing sandpaper on your car but it it worked so here we go a third of the 1500 Asti right now we take this on polishing compound and I picked up this random orbital buffer off of Amazon for literally I think it was 25 bucks I do recommend you get one and I threw it on here and I didn't record this part and I don't know why but this is after I used their random orbital Buffett ER and the rubbing compound polishing compound and I got to say I really like the results and unless I point this out nobody has ever commented on it and said that there was some mistakes or anything and there are if you look really close there are some mistakes in it but it looks 95 percent better than it did before this is my first time there are a lot of things I learned to do differently and if I do this again I'll definitely do differently one of them is absolutely I'll do it in the garage just keep it out of the dust the biggest mistake I know that I made was I didn't prepare the surface wasn't perfectly smooth and if you look really closely at it I couldn't get it on camera if you look really close at it closely at it you can see where the surface wasn't perfectly smooth and the paint just kind of shows that but again for what they wanted to fix this and and what you know I I fixed it for I enjoyed the process it looks really good my wife's happy with it which as you know is really all that matters so I hope it helps and I'll throw a link down below to the website that I got all this from automotive touch up comm reach out those guys I think I think they make a pretty good product maybe there's a lot of products better but for home users like me you are clueless it worked great so I hope this helps some of you out there and realize makes you realize you can tackle this yourself or feel free to shoot me some emails about what I did wrong I'll take it I'll take it into consideration the next time I do this which hopefully is never all right thanks see y'all soon

Channel: Quick Fix

Views: 2,324,239

Rating: 4.6853142 out of 5

Keywords: paint bumper, scuffed bumper, repair scuffed bumper

Id: 6dP4WAXqBtc

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 29 2016