There's a Noticeable Crease in the Curved Fork area where Front Bumper was Repaired

RED2001GT

Dirt-Old 20+Year Member
Mar 18, 2003
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When my car got hit, it made a 4" inch long crease in my front bumper in the part of the plastic which forks upward towards the hood when you look at the car directly from standing in front of the car. The body shop fixed the crease by using some sort of heat repair and then filler/putty. The repair came out okay, but a little bit of the crease is still noticeable underneath the paint if you look at the bumper really close when you run your eyes across the area where the original crease used to be. You can still see a little bit of the original crease under the paint. It looks as if the original crease wasn't flattened out and taken out 100% when the body shop did the repair.
The location of the crease is in the right passenger part of the bumper where the bumper has a fork in it which forks upward towards the hood when you look at the bumper from standing directly in front of the car. That particular area is flat but it curves inward a little bit and then goes straight up towards the hood. There are 2 forks in the front bumper. I am talking about the fork which is on the passenger side of the bumper. The part which curves inward is where the crease used to be. It seems that when the body shop did the repairs, they weren't able to totally make the crease disappear because of the inward curve in the bumper. Do you think that this will pose as a problem? Will the crease show more as time goes by?
ALSO, do you think that a crease like this on the bumper is much harder to fix because it's located in a surface which is curved inwards? I think that if the surface of the bumper was flatter that I wouldn't be able to see any of the original crease that was made in the bumper.
What do you think. A body person's knowledge is needed here for this.
 
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Just be happy that your issue is onparts that can be EASILY replaced, rather then parts thats hardest to replace like mine...
Just replace the bumper cover with something more cool - like Roush, Saleen, y2k or watever.

My bodyhop screw up repair on rear 1/4 panel. they were unable to repair it right, Insurance company said its fixed within Industory standard, and its over $3000 to replace with new panel. I'm ****ed.
 
I am bringing my Mustang back to the body shop on Monday, but the intention of my thread and post is to find out whether or not the crease repair which the body shop just did on the forked curved part of the front bumper is the type of repair where one can see a little bit of the crease just like I am seeing it right now under the paint because the surface is curved?
Is it harder for a body shop to take out a bad crease from that particular area of the front bumper if it's curve shaped? I would think that if the surface was flat and not curved that the repair would have come out meticulous.
What do you guys think? Sorry, I don't hae any pictures.
 
bigcat said:
i dont know where you are describing, but for a good repair, it should not matter. you should not be able to see any imperfections at all.
You can't really see the imperfection unless you know where to look in the same area where the crease used to be located. You have to look at it by running your eyes across or up and down in that one spot where the crease used to be. What you really see when you look at it really good in that area of the front bumper is what was left over of the crease "after" the body shop tried to fix it with heat treatment and/or filler/putty. The particular area which I am referring to is the part of the bumper which goes upward into the hood. That particular surface area on the front bumper is not totally flat and it has a dishlike curve upward all the way to the hood when you stand directly in front of the car and if you look at it from the front of the car.

My question is:
Is the remainder of what was left of the crease still a little bit noticeable because of the curved shape of the area where the crease was originally present? Are curved areas in these type of bumpers which become damaged with creases harder to reshape into their original form and shape because of them not being flat. This is what nobody in here seems to not know how to answer.
 
RED2001GT said:
My question is:
Is the remainder of what was left of the crease still a little bit noticeable because of the curved shape of the area where the crease was originally present? Are curved areas in these type of bumpers which become damaged with creases harder to reshape into their original form and shape because of them not being flat. This is what nobody in here seems to not know how to answer.
bigcat said:
for a good repair, it should not matter. you should not be able to see any imperfections at all.
the curve makes it a little tricky to repair, but it should actually be able to hide the repair better.

bottom line: good repairs are undetectable. is this imperfection (that you have to try really hard to notice) worth your time to dispute? only you know for sure.
 
bigcat said:
the curve makes it a little tricky to repair, but it should actually be able to hide the repair better.

bottom line: good repairs are undetectable. is this imperfection (that you have to try really hard to notice) worth your time to dispute? only you know for sure.
This is "EXACTLY" what I wanted to try to confirm about this type of repair which was just done on the front bumper of my 02 Mustang. I ALSO believe that the curve makes it very "tricky" to repair. The repair that was done actually "hides" the crease, but it doesn't hide it 100%. You can still see a tiny bit of the crease under the paint if you really look at it very closely. Someone who doesn't know that the bumper was ever repaired wouldn't be able to notice this right away unless they were told about the crease and where to look for it. But a little bit of the crease of what was left over "after" the body shop did the repair is still there under the paint. Because the surface area/location on the front bumper where the crease used to be is curved, it was very difficult for the body shop to get 100% of the crease out. I wanted to verify that something like this could occur with a repair like this when a crease on a bumper is located on a surface which is curved and not straight.