How do I repair this damage?

B

Boongie

New member
Hi all:

I am hopping mad! My brand new 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan in silver metallic clearcoat has taken a few hits while on a road trip. Can anybody suggest how and with what to repair the following damaged areas:



1. An oncoming truck hit my outside rearview mirror and left what I would call a scuff in the surface of the housing. The housing is a black plastic material. Is there any way to repair the scuff short of replacing the entire mirror housing?



2. A suitcase was dropped on the rear bumper, which is made out of urethane (I believe) and is also a silver color like the rest of the van. Is there any way to repair the slight scuff left in the urethane?



3. Some dodo in a parking lot opened their door into the side of my van. I don't believe that the paint is damaged but I am not sure. Is there a way to tell other than visual inspection and running my hand over the surface? What is visible is an ever-so- slight dent in my door. Is this worth having fixed or should I let it go? I don't want to create more problems if having it fixed means re-painting a much larger area than the dent.



4. And finally, a passenger in my car reached up to open the inside overhead storage area with a key in her hand. She ended up scratching the black plastic surface of the storage door. Can this scratch be repaired or is replacement the only answer?



Thanks,

Steve
 
To fix the scuff in the bumper, you could buff it out with a good PC and some 3M Finesse-It II, followed by 3M SMR, as long as it didn't break through the clearcoat. Just run your fingernail over it, if you feel a scratch, it might not come out or may be hard to get out. As for the mirrors, if they're those "orange-peeled" texture, where there is little dots everywhere, it'll probably need to be replaced if they were worn off in certain areas. Because they're is no way to get those little dots back.:mad: I found that out the hard way, and had mine painted to match the car.:up The interior piece, well, that could be like the mirrors, but I"m assuming it's more of a vinyl plastic. You might be able to take it out, I don't know what to use. Just run a search, I know they make stuff for it. And for the door, if the paint is damaged, you may need touch up or repaint, but if it's just a dent, I'd check out pricing on local paintless dent repair. It can probably be fixed. :xyxthumbs Good Luck :xyxthumbs
 
Hey brother. If the damage to the mirror is just some paint that rubbed off the truck and transferred to the mirror then you can remove it by rubbing gently with a very mild solvent (even wd-40 will do it probably). Be careful or you will remove the texture of the mirror. If there is already damage to the mirror try www.fibernew.com and they can probably fix it as well as the scratched panel in the interior. As for the dent, as long as the paint is not damaged you can have a qualified paintless dent repair technician remove the dent in under an hour with no painting required and for a considerable savings. Good luck.
 
all the above sounds good, but i dont know what to say unless i see some pix. I can give you a good idea from them as i am a new york state licensed adjuster.

NYD
 
Dry ice will pull small dents..usually used on hoods, trunks, roofs, to fix hail damage, To use on a door or other vertical surface just put a dime size piece of dry ice on the ding cover with a static cling type wrap to hold on to the door...if the cling isnt strong enough( I swiped mine from a restaurant i was working at and is almost as strong as tape and hella harder to tear) you can use tape to hold it. The dry ice will "pull" the dent out.
 
I saw this infomercial... for something called DING KING... sorta pulls out the dent.. not sure if it's good for you though. I just saw it last night.
 
Hi all:

Thanks for the rapid replies. My neighbor loaned me his digital camera and I have two images to post on this thread. My only problem is I have to re-size them to 640 x 480 per this site's requirements. Can anybody suggest how to do this on these jpegs? I have Photoshop on my computer.

Thanks
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top