Philip Foglar
///Member
Right, so my front bumper needed a minor repair and respray - wasn't keen to do spot repairs and therefore wanted to have the bumper removed, repaired and then the entire bumper resprayed. Sounds relatively simple hey? Four weeks later...
Went to Forsdicks Repair Centre and CMC Merc (and other) Approved Repair Centre for some quotes since I was going to do this out of my own pocket. Both quotes were outrageously high and the fact that my car has front PDC there was an added steep cost for diagnostics and resetting the OBC!! The guy from Forsdicks Repair Centre insisted that even if the car's battery is disconnected there will be errors showing on the cluster afterwards! So this "puts" a person off the idea of taking the bumper off themselves and taking it to have the work done!
Now just to clarify, in both cases, the cost of the repair and respray works out to roughly half of the total quote - the rest is labour to remove, refit the bumper and then run diagnostics! Bear in mind that the car is still under motorplan and hence the thought of going to Forsdicks Repair Centre. Spoke to Leonard (Dent Doctor) and Mike (Definitive Auto) about this as well as searched google etc regarding this. Utter nonsense - yes, it might store an error, but nothing needs to be reset, so talk about being lied to in one's face in the chance of simply making more money off you!
Loosened the various screws holding the front bumper, jacked the car up, removed the forward inner wheel well liners, disconnected the fog lights and outer PDC sensors, and then gently removed the bumper, disconnecting the inner PDC sensors as it came away. Unclipped all of the PDC sensors from the bumper and removed the fog lights and other trim pieces, kidney grills - took the bumper through to Brighton Body & Spray (recommended by Mike) to repair and respray the bumper. Total cost worked out to R2400 which is far less than the repair costs of both the other places! Bumper went in on Wednesday morning and got it back on Friday afternoon!
So last night we went to the Roxette concert at Grand West which was great! Anyway, only got home around midnight and my eagerness to get things done kicked in! So fitted all of the trim bits on the bumper and then polished the fog lights with some brasso to take out the majority of the scratches and pitting. Super glue gel seems to have fixed the broken plastic attaching point on the fog light, so no more rattling!
This morning took the forward wheel well liners outside and gave them as good a clean as I could, so they do look better, but will need to spend more time on this, so decided to rather leave that for a later time and clean some other areas on the car before fitting the bumper. Nothing major, just cleaned behind the kidney grills and some of the areas usually covered by the bumper.
Here is what the bumper looked like before being repaired! Still have no idea how that left corner got hurt!
Fixed bumper being fitted - they seem to have been able to match the paint quite well! The tow point cover was was not painted, maybe not the best plan, but thought I would use this to check the paint finish when collecting, so ever so slightly different metallic and shade, but could also be that I need to properly polish the cover and then it's match. But fitted on the car it seems to be spot on!
So very happy with the results! And no errors on the cluster, PDC works properly etc! Just sprayed the car off after fitting - not going to wash for at least a few days. Maybe next month or so is time for some TLC with some of my polishing goodies!
Will take better pics when the sun is out and the car has been cleaned properly!!
Went to Forsdicks Repair Centre and CMC Merc (and other) Approved Repair Centre for some quotes since I was going to do this out of my own pocket. Both quotes were outrageously high and the fact that my car has front PDC there was an added steep cost for diagnostics and resetting the OBC!! The guy from Forsdicks Repair Centre insisted that even if the car's battery is disconnected there will be errors showing on the cluster afterwards! So this "puts" a person off the idea of taking the bumper off themselves and taking it to have the work done!
Now just to clarify, in both cases, the cost of the repair and respray works out to roughly half of the total quote - the rest is labour to remove, refit the bumper and then run diagnostics! Bear in mind that the car is still under motorplan and hence the thought of going to Forsdicks Repair Centre. Spoke to Leonard (Dent Doctor) and Mike (Definitive Auto) about this as well as searched google etc regarding this. Utter nonsense - yes, it might store an error, but nothing needs to be reset, so talk about being lied to in one's face in the chance of simply making more money off you!
Loosened the various screws holding the front bumper, jacked the car up, removed the forward inner wheel well liners, disconnected the fog lights and outer PDC sensors, and then gently removed the bumper, disconnecting the inner PDC sensors as it came away. Unclipped all of the PDC sensors from the bumper and removed the fog lights and other trim pieces, kidney grills - took the bumper through to Brighton Body & Spray (recommended by Mike) to repair and respray the bumper. Total cost worked out to R2400 which is far less than the repair costs of both the other places! Bumper went in on Wednesday morning and got it back on Friday afternoon!
So last night we went to the Roxette concert at Grand West which was great! Anyway, only got home around midnight and my eagerness to get things done kicked in! So fitted all of the trim bits on the bumper and then polished the fog lights with some brasso to take out the majority of the scratches and pitting. Super glue gel seems to have fixed the broken plastic attaching point on the fog light, so no more rattling!
This morning took the forward wheel well liners outside and gave them as good a clean as I could, so they do look better, but will need to spend more time on this, so decided to rather leave that for a later time and clean some other areas on the car before fitting the bumper. Nothing major, just cleaned behind the kidney grills and some of the areas usually covered by the bumper.
Here is what the bumper looked like before being repaired! Still have no idea how that left corner got hurt!
Fixed bumper being fitted - they seem to have been able to match the paint quite well! The tow point cover was was not painted, maybe not the best plan, but thought I would use this to check the paint finish when collecting, so ever so slightly different metallic and shade, but could also be that I need to properly polish the cover and then it's match. But fitted on the car it seems to be spot on!
So very happy with the results! And no errors on the cluster, PDC works properly etc! Just sprayed the car off after fitting - not going to wash for at least a few days. Maybe next month or so is time for some TLC with some of my polishing goodies!
Will take better pics when the sun is out and the car has been cleaned properly!!
