Can I fix this?

[Astouffer512]

My wife comes home from delivering some fundraising supplies from our oldest sons PTO stuff and says, “Dear, I don’t know what exactly I did, but when I was leaving so and so’s house I bumped something and heard a scrape.” By now it was dark so I decided to wait until this afternoon when I got home from work to check it out.

This area is of course the painted plastic that is used


In this picture you can see some of the plastic shavings from whatever she scraped against



I have a Porter Cable DA with a 5” backing plate and a 3” backing plate. I only have foam pads.

I’m sure I can’t fix it completely, but if I can minimize it that would be great. I’m sure the best way is the replace it, but that’s probably not financially in the cards right now

Thanks!


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[Billy Baldone]

You might be able to clean it up a little, but if it were my car, I would tape it off and just plasti dip it. It lloks like it could have been a black piece from the factory

[TheMeanGreen]

Depending on the car, that entire front lip may even be replaceable. Or you could just tape it off and plastidip it, and every time the wife scrapes the lip you can just touch it up with plastidip, I think an even better idea would be to bedline the lip, greatly minimizing damage. Another option would be something like this: https://www.colorxlabs.com/

[dcjredline]

Polish or Compound wont do enough to that to make it worth the time and then the effort trying to get the polishing oils out of it when you have to repaint anyway.

Sorry. That isnt really bad

[phatrs]

I don’t think you can fix your wife.


Ben - Melbourne/Australia

Now: ‘19 VW Golf R, ‘15 Polo GTI
Before: ‘06 RenaultSport Megane 225 Cup, ‘14 VW Polo GTI, ‘12 VW Golf GTI, ‘06 VW Golf GTI, ‘05 VW Golf Sportline, ‘01 Holden Astra SRi, ‘00 Nissan Pulsar SSS, ‘99 Holden Astra CD, ‘98 Nissan Pulsar SLX, ‘91 Nissan Pulsar GL with Q engine swap, ‘80 Subaru Leone

[Accumulator]

Astouffer512- Unfortunately that`s beyond fixing with abrasives since there`s no paint there in the damaged area to abrade

It really requires Pro attention involving at least repainting the damaged area and probably the whole bumpercover (I gather that "spotting in repairs" isn`t as feasible with today`s paints as it used to be). I`d ask my painter to do only the bottom of the cover, below the break-line and maybe he`d do that. Otherwise the cover has to come off for a complete refinish. It doesn`t *appear* to be so bad as to require replacement, but it`s hard to tell from internet pix.

Note that such pieces require a Flex Additive; it`s not as simply as using some touchup paint, at least not if you want it to last.

I wouldn`t worry too much about getting the surface perfectly restored as IMO once it`s painted the damage won`t be obvious. Not that a good shop can`t probably do a near-perfect repair.

Heh heh, you guys who would Plastidip it have, uhm...different standards than my wife and I do.

[Astouffer512]

I didn’t think there would be much I could do to fix it.

Best thing in the short term is just to get the scraggly plastic off and re protect it

What is the best way to remove the plastic scrapings? Just peel / cut it off or is there actually a best way?

Should I do any polishing or just wipe it down with some surface cleaner / IPA mix and re seal it with the power lock again?


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[Accumulator]

Astouffer512- Here`s what *I* would do for a short-term improvement:

-Inspect it with magnification, really *see* what you`re dealing with. I bet your eyes are a lot younger/better than mine, but I`d be wearing my Illuminated Magnifying Visor for the whole job

-Smooth the chewed-up plastic with a not-too-coarse diamond burr on a rotary tool. Use a *small* burr at a moderate speed (not so fast that it melts anything) and be careful to not expand the area of damage. Clean the burr very frequently as it might get loaded up with platic

-Apply single-stage touchup paint like DrColorChips using a small brush (use it like "regular" touchup paint, not with their "smear it around" method), and maybe do a little chemical leveling of it

That should make for an OK "20-20" fix (i.e., kinda OK-looking from twenty feet away when the car`s going 20mph). Who knows, you might find that after living with that kind of fix for a while it`s not all *that* irritating after all.

OK, I know that not everybody has an Illuminated Magnifying Visor or diamond burrs, or even a rotary tool (e.g., Dremel), but those are *really* useful things to have around so I don`t mine spending your money on `em