Leaving home early on Saturday morning we were traveling on a side road that borders with a state park & a fox came out of the bushes like a blur & hit my left corner bumper.... Bummers!!!

Gave the car quite a jolt & the wife never even seen him coming- thought we hit a big pothole at 35 MPH. When we got to our destination 200 miles away I got out & checked for damage & found a 12" round dent in the bumper....

There's no creases or paint loss, not even any fur or blood...

Now the bumper is made of plastic, has anybody successfully removed a dent by removing the splash pan & knocking it out with a sledge hammer? Could I cause more damage by trying this?

I really don't want to process a claim with my insurance company (Geico) if it's something I can possibly fix myself....

Any help would be greatly appreciated... this is the wife's car & she took the 04 Sienna to work this morning so I could return her TCH to its former beauty...

 

Check your ploicy, some companies don't count hitting an animal as part of their collision (resulting in increased premiums) but rather their comprehensive (like glass damage)

 

Either way they may still come back and ding him on his premium. My insurance company counted it against my daughter for an accident that was not her fault. Just the idea of any claim makes them raise the rates.

 

Nationwide does not raise premiums on COMPREHENSIVE claims.

 

Jim,

The technique is to slowly heat the bumper (from the inside - don't bubble the paint) and you will be able to pop out the dent (as long as it is not badly creased) using a heat gun.

JeffD

 

If the dent is clean with no creases and no paint damage, then call your local Dent Pro representative. Since it's the ABS plastic, it might be a really quick/easy fix for DentPro.

 

A coworker backed her Jeep into something last year and dented the corner of her plastic bumper cover. She had it fixed via the heating/pushing method and it is as good as new. Wasn't terribly expensive, as I recall.

 

Thank you very much for your great suggestions... I went to the local body shop armed with knowledge gleaned from here & let the owner know what I wanted done w/o my insurance company getting involved.

He quoted $100 -125 for R R & R the front bumper...

Time lost 1 day...

Knowledge gained... Priceless

 

Took the damaged TCH to the local body shop today, leaving yellow sticky notes with explicit instrucitions on how to properly start & shut down the hybrid powerplant.

4 hours later the manager called & said that they were done with the dent & that it looked as good as new!

I went to pick it up & was pleasantly suprised to find a perfect repair with no evidence of the big ugly dent that was present only a few hours earlier!!! The paint was not damaged & there were no kinks in the plastic. They did indeed carefully heat the area and the plastic bumper went back into place with a bit of elbow grease.

Price for the 3 hour job: $105 including tax.... I told him I would come to him for all my future body work.



I tried to attach some .jpg 's but it wouldn't recognize the file extension..

 

Congrats, Jim!

Not only was the "plastic surgery" a success, but the price was right! I'm sure you're happy to have your baby back.