Hi,

My wife backed out of our garage and carefully negotiated her way around the construction dumpster and the contractor's trailer (we're having 3 bathrooms remodeled). Unfortunately at this point she ran out of talent (as one famous F1 driver was quoted when asked about why he went off and crashed at a corner). Her incident was not nearly as bad as his, but it resulted in a softball size concave area on the outside edge of the driver's side rear bumper from contract with my Chevy Tracker. You'll be happy to hear that the Tracker was totally unscathed. Woo.

I have two questions for knowledgeable collision and/or Mini experts:

1) The bumper cover is also cracked all the way through in a couple of places, but I don't think anything is amiss under it. Is it possible to order a prepainted Dark Silver bumper cover and just replace it? Does anyone know the cost?

2) Just above the bumper cover on the sheet mental - right on the corner there is a shallow dent that did not disturb the paint. Is this a candidate for "paintless repair" or since this area is on a bend in the metal, which I think would make the area pretty strong, "paintless repair" won't work? I don't want to have the whole quarter panel repainted so I'll just have to live with the dent if the 'paintless repair" won't work.

Thanks in advance,

Mark

 

1) I don't think so. I backed into a BMW and tore the rear bumper. This was at about 1 mph. MINI of Mountain View sent me down the block to Autobahn Body & Paint. They had to mix paint to match my Pure Silver. If a pre-painted bumper was available, I think MINI of Mountain View would have made it available. Further more, the factory doesn't seem to be very consistent between paint batches. Autobahn was doing two jobs at one time: my scoop was being repainted because it didn't match the bonnet (warranty work) and the rear bumper (not warranty). After getting a close match for the bonnet, they tried using that on the bumper and found it was wrong. Took them two or three attempts to get a match they were happy with on the rear. They speculated that all or part of my bonnet got resprayed at the factory or VDC.

Edit: Even though it was a 1 mph hit, it bent a bar underneath the bumper. I took it to two places for an estimate. Neither saw this damage during the estimate. It was only discovered when the bumper was removed. Cost of repair $1500. Insurance deductable $1000.

 

Thanks Robin,

I wish I could just put a new cover on myself, but I can't if it needs to be painted. I have a $1,000 deductable too, but I won't be turning this one in to insurance. I have a policy that rebates a 1/3 of each years premium after 3 years without a claim. Well, 3 years is up in just over a week. Anything I picked up on insurance would be more than lost by forgoing the rebate and I'd get a 'ding' for an accident. I guess I'll start getting some estimates.

Mark