We help people repair plastic
Many damaged bumpers are thrown in the landfill not because they are torn but just because they are dented. Dents in plastic bumpers can be removed with the right tools and some practice using the correct process. In this video, we will show you how to remove the dent from this Toyota Prius bumper using our Bumper Rollers and Dent Driver tools.
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Note: This is a list of the Polyvance products that can be used to make this repair. This list does not include sanders, grinders, or other common tools you will need. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to call technical support at 800-633-3047.
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English Transcript:
Many damaged bumpers are thrown in the landfill not because they are torn but just because they are dented. Dents in plastic bumpers can be removed with the right tools and some practice using the correct process. In this video, Polyvance, a leader in plastic repair since 1981, will show you how to remove the dent from this Toyota Prius bumper using our Bumper Rollers and Dent Driver tools.
This Toyota Prius bumper has a fairly deep dent with a hard crease around the edge in the corner that has distorted a couple of body lines. Most shops would throw this bumper in the landfill, but with some heat and a bit of effort with the right tools and process, this bumper can be restored to its original profile without the use of filler.
The first step is to clean the bumper with soap and water, then one of Polyvance’s plastic cleaning solutions. Spray on a heavy, wet coat of the plastic cleaner then wipe dry with a clean paper towel.
Note that the dent extends all the way over to the left side of the fog light hole. The next step is to heat the plastic over the entire dented area and for about four to six inches to the outside of the dent. This process will take some time, as it’s important to get the plastic hot all the way through the plastic. Keep the heat gun moving so you don’t overheat any certain area. It will take at least five minutes of work with the heat gun to get the plastic soft enough to move easily. Keep heating until the plastic is too hot to hold your hand on the surface.
Once the plastic is soft enough to move, we’ll use the round roller in Polyvance’s 6148 Bumper Roller kit to push the large part of the dent out. Keep pushing and rolling until the major part of the dent is pushed out. It only takes about ten seconds to get ninety percent of the dent pushed out. The rest of this video will show you how to perfect the last ten percent and get the bumper ready for paint.
Note that you can still see a high spot where the hard crease was. While the bumper is still hot, use the round roller to push the high spot down. Check the profile by hand to identify the remaining high and low spots.
Use the heat gun again to soften the plastic as necessary to continue to push the dents out. Here we are using Polyvance’s 6119 Dent Driver as a dolly on the backside as we continue to push the crease down with the roller. Keep checking the profile by hand and continue to work the crease with the roller and Dent Driver as needed to get it back into shape.
Note that the Dent Drivers offer several surfaces that will aid in dent removal. You can use the sharp point, the sharp edge, or the flat of the tool to press on the hot plastic. Here the tool serves as a dolly to stabilize the bumper as we roll the low spot up from the backside with the roller. Keep checking the profile to identify the high and low spots and keep working it until you feel you’re not making any more progress.
To restore the appearance of the sharp body lines, use the sharp roller in the Bumper Roller kit and the Dent Driver Mini to push out the bumper along the body lines.
Once you get to the point where you feel you’re not making any more progress on the dents, sand the surface with 80 grit in a DA sander to reveal the remaining high and low spots. In this part of the process, you are using the OEM paint as a guide coat to help you visualize the high and low spots. So it’s very important that you keep the sander’s pad flat on the surface so you don’t hide the low spots. Also, avoid sanding directly on the body lines. Note here that the bumper above the fog light hole has a large low spot in the middle.
Now we’ll sand where the crease was. You can see the crease itself is still a high spot and there are low spots on either side of the crease. A certain amount of the high spots can be sanded off, but you don’t want to make the plastic too thin. Continue sanding until you feel like it’s time to get back to work with the dent removal tools.
Finally we sand the area around the fog light hole. As you can see, there are some low spots here that will have to be pushed out with the Dent Drivers. Heat the area again with a heat gun to soften the plastic and get it ready for some more dent pushing. Push up from the backside where the low spots are and feel the profile often to gauge your progress. Feel the opposite side of the bumper to calibrate your hand to the proper profile for the part. Continue to heat and push as needed to restore the original profile to the plastic. Use whichever surface or edge of the Dent Driver that best matches the bumper to push the low spots up and the high spots down. The Dent Driver Mini offers a sharper tip to get into body lines or tight spots easier. You can use a Dent Driver on each side, one acting as a dolly to keep you from pushing too much.
Go back to the sander after you’ve worked the dents. Again, keep the pad flat so you don’t remove paint from the low spots. If you’ve pushed the dents out enough, you will see the paint sanded off, meaning that you’re making progress toward your goal. If you still see some paint, push a bit more from the back until the paint disappears. Keep checking the profile by hand and keep working the dents until you restore the profile.
As you can see, getting out all of the minor imperfections is the most time-consuming task in the dent removal process. If you see paint, you still have some low spots, so keep working them until they disappear.
High spots are harder to identify since the paint is gone, so you have to go by feel. Here the high spot from the crease is still there, so push it down with the Dent Drivers. Here we are using the flat edge of the large Dent Driver to push down while we support the backside to concentrate the force where it’s needed to shrink the crease. Keep working the bumper, sanding it, and checking the profile until you are satisfied that the profile has been completely restored. It takes more time and effort to do this without filler, but the reward is that you will save the time required to work the filler.
The next step will be to sand the entire area with 180 and 320 grit paper to remove the 80 grit fuzz and get it ready for primer. Keep the pad flat and go outside the boundaries from the previous grits to feather the paint back around the edges.
To prep for primer, scuff the entire area to be primed with a red scuff pad. There’s no need to remove all the OEM paint. As long as the paint has good adhesion to the bumper, we will apply primer on top of it. We just need to put a good sand scratch into the paint so the primer will stick. Make sure you remove all of the gloss from the painted areas.
Before priming, blow the area dust free with compressed air, then clean again with Polyvance’s 1000 Super Prep. Let the solvent dry completely while you mask off the areas of the bumper you don’t want to prime. Over all of the raw plastic areas, apply Polyvance’s 1050 Plastic Magic adhesion promoter. This will help the primer to stick to the raw polypropylene. Spray a medium wet coat, then let it flash off for about 15 minutes.
Next apply your preferred primer surfacer. Here we are using Polyvance’s 3043 All Seasons Black Jack waterborne primer. This is a high build primer that remains flexible when dry so it won’t crack if the bumper flexes. Apply one or two coats of primer and let it dry completely. Sand the primer with 320 grit in a block to reveal any remaining imperfections. The 3043 primer acts as its own guide coat with a clear difference in appearance between sanded and unsanded areas. If you have any remaining low spots at this stage, it would probably be better to fill them rather than push them out. Luckily, our work showed no such imperfections, so we went back and sprayed another coat of All Seasons Black Jack primer to finish the job. This bumper has a completely restored surface that’s ready for paint, without the use of any filler. The process is not difficult, but it does take practice to get a feel for how the plastic moves when heated and pushed, and again, the majority of the time is spent getting the last ten percent of the surface perfected.
Check out Polyvance’s tools for dent removal at www.polyvance.com. Polyvance has everything you need to restore damaged plastic parts to keep them out of the landfill and to keep more labor hours in your estimates.
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