A few weeks ago someone must have tapped my rear bumper in a parking lot. I noticed some hairline cracks. The paint started chipping away and now has spread to about a palm sized area. A bumper repaint will run about $300-350. I know this because I've already had to do the rear bumper once and the front bumper once with exactly the same problem. That's $1000 on bumper repaints in just over a year. I'm thinking the problem is the very flexible plastic on the bumpers. The material will bounce back from an impact but the paint can't handle the stress. Has anyone found a solution? Is there such a thing as flexible paint? Do the invisible bumper covers protect against impact as well as minor road debris?

 

I am actually rattle canning my rear bumper for the same issue. I have a thread about it, hopefully we will be finished by Friday. https://mustangforums.com/forum/2005...repaint-2.html If it comes out well maybe you can try it. This is how I looked at it, if it comes out like crap I will have to get it repainted, but I would have had to do it anyway. But if it comes out decent I will have bought myself sometime and saved some money.

I would say the only think you could do to keep it from happening again is park as far from other people as possible. That is why I ended up replacing my front bumper. I hit a raccoon and the paint started to chip right after.

 

::sigh:: only in Oklahoma hitting raccoons and tornadoes!

 

Usually when bumpers are painted there's an additive mixed, that makes the paint a little flexible so it doesn't flake and crack from normal conditions of heating and expansion, and minor flexes. Unfortunately it's not as flexible as the plastic, so getting hit does crack the paint. The rattle can solution can look good for a while, but will eventually crack and peel as well. Unfortunately, the pro painters have the edge over us DIY types for this problem.

 

Props to you for attempting this. I probably wouldn't attempt this myself since I'm both chicken and lazy Fortunately my care is silver metallic so the bare plastic doesn't stand out so much. Looks like I've got no choice but to go back to the paint shop. I'd still like to hear if anyone has had good luck with the clear bumper protector. It would be well worth it if it would protect against minor dings.

 

Well at least I wasn't hit by a raccoon being thrown by a tornado...

Yeah, OP I would not recommend doing it yourself. A real pain in the ***, although I do think its going to come out well.

 

I got an idea for ya Dave. Forget paying $300 to get it repainted, go with a GT rear. I got my GT/CS painted white for $275 as a takeoff, and you can find em on ebay, classifieds etc. Problem solved

 

The man does make a pretty good case for that...craigslist usually has take off parts around too and google mustang take off parts for more hits.

 

Edited: Good idea about swapping for a painted GT rear bumper. I did this when I needed to repaint the front bumper last last year. After doing some searching, I've found that the supply of used rear bumpers has pretty much dried up now. I could buy one new and unpainted, but that will just add a couple of hundred bucks the project.