Litle mishap in the parking lot.

[KrisZ]

It happen on our Church's parking lot, of all places, and to top it off, it was a young priest backing out carelessly out of the parish garage.
I managed to epoxy the broken bracket, and remove the dent after heating up the bumper. Good thing the temps were above freezing when it happened, otherwise the bumper would probably end up in several pieces.





This is after the fix, It's not a perfect match, but I can live with it.

 

[aquariuscsm]

Wow,good job,it looks great!

 

[Dr_Who]

Very impressive job Kris!

 

[02SE]

Why isn't the person responsible, taking responsibility?

That's one of the tenets of most (all?) religions.

 

[The_Jeff]

church isn't capitalized. It's not "Chr ist."

 

[tig1]

Your repair work looks great.

 

[carviewsonic]

Good job on the repair. For any remaining scratches or scuffs, I've used Meguires Scratch X with some success. Seems to work better on dark colors (like yours) for some reason.

 

[RichardS]

You did a fantastic job getting it back together!

I imagine the priest was willing to make it right, and you just did it yourself because you could, and were being nice?

 

[KrisZ]

When I was young and stupid, I was forgiven something similar, so I'm more inclined to let minor stuff go.
I'm hoping the young priest learned to be more careful.

 

[gregk24]

Great job making it look much better. I can't say I would have been as forgiving, they have insurance for this sort of thing.

 

[RichardS]

Originally Posted By: KrisZ
When I was young and stupid, I was forgiven something similar, so I'm more inclined to let minor stuff go.
I'm hoping the young priest learned to be more careful.


That's a very kind thing for you to do.

 

[SatinSilver]

Sending that through insurance probably would have cost about $1200 or so. Since the body shop likes to gouge for this type of stuff. Maybe $800 on the low side. Less claims equals lower premiums. I agree nice thing to do. Good to let the car serve you and not the other way around. Some people act like they won the lottery when these things happen.

 

[JC1]

Nice repair. I hope that preist learns a lesson.

 

[SF0059]

I had that same generation Mazda 3 and the bumpers are shockingly resilient. The bumper on mine was low speed crunched 3 times (once was my fault... drove straight into a fallen tree. Long story). After some massaging it still looked good when I sold it.

However, I never had to break out the epoxy. That repair looks great! Be careful when using any kind of scratch remover or compound, the paint on Mazdas is notoriously thin.