Bumper Repair

Accidents Happen...

This sort of minor damage to a car is common and happens eventually if you own a car for long enough.  The annoying part about it to me is that your options for dealing with it are limited and often times less than ideal:

1. Take the car to a dealership or repair shop to get it fixed properly.  This is the easiest method and will bring the car back into perfect working order but it seems that no matter what the problem is it will always cost ~ $500 or whatever your insurance deductible is.
2. Shop around to find the appropriate bumper part yourself and attempt to remove and replace the piece on your own.  By buying the parts yourself you can save about half the repair cost but you're then on your own to figure out how to fix it.  The repair could take half a day or more to complete and that's if you do it correctly and don't damage other parts while trying to remove and replace the one broken part.  
3. Live with the dent/scrape/damage.  This is undesirable for many reasons, but it's undeniably the cheapest and easiest solution of the three.

Before going down one of these paths I figured I would try a different solution.  I would use some of my home improvement troubleshooting skills and see if I could apply them to our car.  After assessing the actual damage it seemed to be limited to a few plastic rivets that had come out and a broken attachment point on the end of the bumper (pictured).

Broken Bumper Attachment Point

So I found and ordered a bag of the appropriate retainer clips and ordered some JB Weld epoxy putty on Amazon.  For $10 I had the supplies I needed to try the quick repair.  If it didn't work I was only out a few dollars and I could still go down one of the 3 usual car repair paths.

Repair Supplies

I popped the plastic clips in place along the edge of the bumper where they had come loose and used the putty to help create a new attachment point for the end to keep it in place.  Afterwards I used some adhesive remover to help wipe off the paint that had transferred to the bumper and finished it with a fresh coat of wax.

Put Back Together

The finished repair is almost as good as putting on a new piece.  You would have to be looking for it to notice any difference.  Definitely good enough for a 7 year old car; 2009 Toyota Camry.  Still looks and runs great.  

Plastic Rivet Clip

JB Weld!

Before

After