Repair of front bumper dent

Boy I don't know but that bumper feels plastic to me. A lot of time the backing to this is a foam like material and once deformed it is toast, unlike metal. I would bet that one of the masters here will help us both out. I am but a novice unworthy to attempt to snatch the pebble from the grand masters hand.

 

Sorry to hear about your Prii,
What kind of dent did you put on that dog?

 

Well, apparently some kids thought it would be great fun to place a pile of pumpkins, leaves, and grass in the road near my home tonight. Very dark out, raining, etc. I saw the pile right before I hit it at 30 mph. I think the only part of the car that is damaged is the front bumper. The plastic surrounding the driver side fog light came loose but is not damaged. The very bottom bumper appears to be plastic and looks like it will have to be replaced. Any idea how much this will cost? Sounds like an insurance claim to me, but the damage looks so "minor"!

 

with these slight bumper damages that i read, looks like the deductable would just be met and the insurance companies would probably say, dont even bother,unless you want to be labelled as a person who has claims and then they raise your rates...i talked to a body man on some of this stuff, seeing how i'd like to know too, and he said usually if you start to bend this stuff around, seeing how its so lightweight it is more of a pain,so unless you can touch it up, the cracks may continue as the bumper"breathes"otherwise a new plastic one would have to be ordered and painted in the tune of $1000 or more...

 

I dinged my car the first week I owned it. The plastic bumper cover was surprisingly cheap--$150 or so. Painting pushed the total to just shy of $500.

 

I called Toyota Collision this morning and have a Monday appointment to have it looked at. The woman on the phone told me that if it is just the bumper, it will be around $1000. Maybe Northern California prices are different? Anyway, they have a direct line with my insurance and I trust them, so that is likely what I will do. Thank goodness no one was hurt. Too bad the kids that did it were not caught.

 

The spoiler in the back between the windows is $300 just for the part unpainted. However, they use ABS plastic for that, its different for the bumpers. Bumpers are supposed to be lower cost replacement items.

 

I just got a small dent in the driver's side front bumper of My 07 Prius. I found this video on Youtube, and it looks like my dent is half the size with no paint damage at all.

Major Prius Bumper Dent Repair

I think that trick might work for me. Has anyone else tried this?

 

THAT was worth resurrecting a five-year old thread for.

Awesome!!

 

Those dam clever Japanese have a bumper repair tool that looks just like a hair dryer.

In my amateur opinion if you can feel behind the bumper to push it out it is worth trying the high power hair dryer. If it gets too close I'd expect some paint damage or melted bumper.

 

Holy cow! It worked! 1 Sham Wow with Simple Green + 2 hair dryers + 1 Heat Dish + 2 skinny arms and hands = 1 bumper popped out and pretty close to normal!!! Now, with the $$ I saved, I might actually be able to fix the garage wall that so rudely bumped into my car!

I'd post pix of the amazing success, but I'm new (only joined to share the amazing news) so they aren't letting me post a link

 

I dinged the bumper on my Prius a few days after the local council decided to fit new picket fences to stop people driving on grass verges. They put them so close to the edge of the drives, it was almost impossible to drive in without swinging out to the wrong side of the road. Getting home in the dark, I didn't even notice the new 12 inch high post till I hit it!

Anyway, the whole corner was pushed in just like on that video. I decided to not give it time to settle in its new position so within about ten minutes of doing that damage, I just reached in behind and pushed it all back out again. I had to use a length of wood for leverage, the stuff is quite tough - didn't think to heat it up!
You can tell it's been hit by something due to a slight deformation - it's slightly flatter than it was originally but the dent has gone.

 

Thanks for the great advice. I tried the hair dryer trick on a dent just beside and below the offside fog lamp on my 2006 Prius, caused by a builders bucket rolling around on the freeway. Although I wasn't able to remove the black guard at the bottom of the bumper (the accident cracked the bottom of the bumper and I didn't want to risk making it worse), I managed to get my fingers behind the dent and gently push it out after about a minute of playing the hair drier on maximum a few centimetres away from the damaged area. Glad I wore a glove though as the area got quite hot. There's still a small crease I couldn't completely repair and I now need to fill in a couple of cracks and touch up the paintwork, but it's 100 percent better than it was. Now I can stand back and admire my Prius again from all angles. After four years it still gives me a kick!

 

Those darn clever Japanese may be 1st and second gen American citizens, working on that second generation prius. :-0

 

I was going to use a heat gun to reset the boulder detector in my plastic rocker panel, only by the time I got around to it, parking in the sun had already done the job.