Can this be touched up?

**Sleper** · 03-07-2021, 09:01 AM

Originally Posted by barry2021

$575 seems a lot for a bumper respray. In Ireland, where the cost of living would be higher, you would expect to pay about $420- $450. I have worked in the motor trade for over 25 years including some time as a crash repair assessor. The cost of doing half a bumper would be 60-65% of a full bumper respray. The only downside is once done, the other side won't look so nice.

I would recommend against doing a touch-up as it will usually look worse if you are not experienced at doing this. Get a black sharpie pen and colour the defects (not recommending as a permanent repair..lol) as this will give you an idea of how a touch-up will look if you are not going to sand down the area. If you are going to attempt to repair the damage, fill and sand you will be painting a much larger area. You will need to scotch and clear coat half the bumper.

Best option if you don't want to spend so much money is it leave as it is or find a mobile smart repairer.

I agree that if you only spray half the bumper it will not look right as the other side will have stone chips and some fading. I would bite the bullet if you are going to keep the car and get the entire bumper painted. If you are planning on selling do half the bumper. Good luck

**JPW** · 03-09-2021, 10:40 PM

Well, I'm not sure what happened with the notifications on this forum, but I didn't see any of these responses until just now. I might have taken a different direction had I known. Regardless, I just decided to try it last night. I didn't really think it could look any worse and I didn't want to spend any more time and money on it so away I went.

All I did was clean the area with dawn soap twice. No sanding. Then I went over the area with isopropyl alcohol. Masked the area and put on about 4 coats of base and 4 coats of clear coat. I tried to spray pretty lightly on each iteration.

Here is a shot after the second base coat. The white spots can still be seen.

Here is a shot after the 4th coat of clear coat.

Here are two shots after it dried.

Ultimately, I'm satisfied with the results. Honestly, these pictures make it probably look a little better than it is because the car is dirty. I'll be interested to see what it all looks like once I wash it. Who knows whether it will stay or not, but at least for now, I think I got what I was after, which was having it look ok from a distance. Up close the imperfections are obvious, but I knew going in that would be the case. The paint / clear coat still don't feel completely dry to me since it is just a slight bit tacky so I'm going to wait for it to completely dry before trying some rubbing compound on it to see if I can brighten it up a bit. Thanks again for the guidance here.