My master cylinder failing left some damage on my front bumper cover.
I really didn’t want to use a body shop, because I always feel like it’s super expensive. I was searching around ebay and found that you can buy prepainted bumper covers for only $200, whereas I thought a front bumper repair at a body shop could cost easily $500 and upwards of $800. It seemed like putting a bumper couldn’t be that hard, probably a few screws and a ton of clips. It arrived yesterday, and here’s the install log.
First, it arrived packed extremely well with baby powder to keep the paint job clean, a layer of foam, then several layers of bubble wrap, followed by a layer of cardboard and another layer of plastic.
After unwrapping everything I decided to remove my old bumper which left my front looking like this.
The most difficult part was removing the clips without breaking them, but after my power lock install (to be posted), I was an expert at that. Then I installed the new one. It took all of one hour end to end and turned out great!
I learned a couple of things from this. One, this is the golden age of repairs. You can find videos that tell you how to do anything on the internet. I got instructions on doing the removal and install from youtube. Basically, all that is needed is the confidence to risk breaking the thing you are fixing more than it already is. Second, the paint blending process that body shops do seems to be totally unnecessary. My old paint job is 10 years old and the company painted to factory spec. The match is perfect. So, if I ever use a body shop again, I might tell them to forgo the blending them and save some money.