Rear Bumper
- Thread starter dark86
- Start date
- :
- 2003 Mazda Protege 5
Lord_Zath said:
What he said
my bumper got scraped up too... mine's pretty bad, do i need a new bumper? heh
http://www.msprotege.com/forum/showthread.php?t=95396
http://www.msprotege.com/forum/showthread.php?t=95396
paranoidxe
Member
- :
- Protege5 2002
Try buffing it out with one of those $15-$20 buffers from Walmart. This worked like a charm when I got hit going to work when some dumbass didn't pay attention and hit my ass end.
Black_Protege_5
Member
- :
- Mazda Protege 5
I there are any dents you could bondo and repaint it. If its just a scratch you could try to buff it out.
- :
- Protege5 2003
dark86 said:
Crease or a tear? Like they said, pics would help.
You want to take the bumper cover off to fix it so that you can access both sides. It's not very hard to remove the rear bumper cover (see http://protege5.ugly.net/ ). If it's just a cut or narrow tear, you may be able to repair it pretty well by taping up the inside and/or using adhesive to close the cut. This assumes that the plastic isn't all raggedy, in which case that won't work so well. Since you don't know how it happened you should take it off anyway to inspect the energy absorber underneath - a fancy name for a big block of styrofoam. If that's mashed it should be replaced. If it's only cracked you can probably tape that up as well.
FYI I was rearended a while back and it mashed the styrofoam and scuffed the rear bumper. The charge was over $1000 to fix it, including paint and so forth. It was the other guy's dime so it didn't matter to me.
If you can seal up the bumper you have reasonably well and it's structurally sound underneath I wouldn't bother replacing the cover. These bumper covers are so fragile it's a joke so it really isn't worth the effort to try to keep them pristine.
