Too Much Sauce!!

Had the day off today so I figured that I would swing by some body shops to get a quote on painting the rear base bumper valance in gloss (or textured) black on my v6.

Started off by placing some calls to get a feel for the market, first asking how much to paint an entire bumper, common denominator seemed to be 250-350. I thought to myself, perfect. If an entire bumper would be around $300, then I'd only be looking at$150-$200 since it's only a small portion, boy was I wrong.

Lowest quote I got was $350 (from a shop that does full bumpers for $250, multiple owners told me that it would cost more to paint less of the bumper)

Ford dealership quoted me $350 for full bumper, and $450 for only valance.

TOO MUCH SAUCE.

What I'm trying to do is this.


Do these prices seem legit or am I being hit with the Okey Doke, the Flim Flam, BamBoozled!


EDIT

Now I think I may be considering the possibility of doing a premium bumper upgrade.

I understand that there are dozens of 5.0 owners out there that have successfully done the base to premium bumper upgrade, but I have a V6. It could be possible that the mounting points from the base V6 are different than the base GT, therefore a premium conversion might not work out, can anyone confirm this?

If the 5.0 and 3.7 both use the same base rear bumper, then why is it that I'm finding a base bumper SPECIFICALLY for the 3.7? This tells me that the mounting brackets in the 5.0 allow for the premium conversion, which will be unsuccessful on the V6

Here's what I'm talking about, this base bumper is specifically listed for the V6 (highlighted in yellow)





Can someone clear this up for me please. I've tried contacting some body shop dudes at ford dealers and they have no clue what I'm talking about.

Why do you want to have this done ? One thing I really like about the V6, compared to other S550 styles, is that the entire rear bumper & valance are the same body color.

I don't care for the 2-tone rear bumper & valance / diffuser color combo look.

I called a bodyshop and they quoted me with $600.... I hung up and decided to plasti-dip.... Cost me $15 and I recently took this picture. Still going strong for like 6 months! No Ragrets

I considered doing a wrap for that area. I think it would be much cheaper and a little easier than plastidip. I do have a friend that did plastidip the same area with great results, so for $15 its tough to beat if you have the patience.

Vinyl wrap shouldn't cost more than $100 or $150 tops, and dip is $10 or $15.

Too much $ for something so small.

The reason I'm talking about paint rather than Plasti or wrap is because I'm planning on faking it until I'm making it.

Orange mustang with Panted black valance, with orange painted MMD diffuser for that premium bumper look. (Looks a bit more aggressive than an actual premium bumper since the MMD diffuser has sharper edger and sticks out further)

Painted base bumper with Painted MMD diffuser, which is the look I'm after. Notice how it looks like fangs down there with the sharp edges



Vs the regular premium.

Bring it up. I will help you do it with plastidip. It will look great and you will be happy. Only 3 hour drive. :cheers:

Dude do not Plasti dip it. Take it to MAACO and they will paint the valence properly for $140. I got mine done in January. My exhaust has since been adjusted and doesn't stick out like that

^ PM'd

I had mine wrapped last March and it didn't last 2 months, the curves and bends tend to lift on the wrap. They heated the wrap to make it mold and it looked great for 2 weeks then started to lift.

I ended up removing the wrap myself and plastidipped the area. It has been a year already and NO issues with the dip. Best part is I can remove the dip if I ever what to change the look.

Good luck OP.

WRAP below...




Plastidip below...

Depends what "look" you want. Paint will not replicate the OEM look; gloss black, as you see from above painted, is not the OEM look. There is no paint that can replicate the sideskirts on the car; that rough textured plastic. Leaving paint not clear coated back there to get matte is going to get destroyed because of the area it's in with road debris and weather.

And the examples above blacked out the fins which are left body color OEM. Again, depends what look you want.

The BEST match for texture would be Plastidip since it is not smooth to begin with an matte black. It should work incredibly well back there. At worse you dont like the finished product and only wasted $10-15 trying.

If you're going to spend 3 digits on paint for that tiny bit (it's more for the portion because they have to mask it off. The premium bumper is 2 pieces and separated you just spray the bumper cover in one swoop one color and put back in the black plastic insert) then you mine as well just get the premium bumper then and have it painted; add the $100 difference to the cost of the bumper. Or find a used one somewhere.

I would dip it until you can afford the premium bumper. I used to plastidip my rear 944 emblem because it had bleached white and Porsche wanted over 100 for it haha. It worked great, no one could tell it wasn't OEM, and lasted about a year or so before I peeled it off and put another two coats on it.

I tried dipping it but the area is so large and you need so much tape it peeled in a lot of places when I was removing it. Someone did a post about using bumper paint. So I did that. Yeah you can't remove it but it holds up way better. Bought 2 cans and that was plenty. You can get it at any auto parts store.

Shouldhavegotthegt said:

I tried dipping it but the area is so large and you need so much tape it peeled in a lot of places when I was removing it. Someone did a post about using bumper paint. So I did that. Yeah you can't remove it but it holds up way better. Bought 2 cans and that was plenty. You can get it at any auto parts store.

Click to expand...

That exact thing almost happened to me... I used a squeege (a credit card would work too) to hold the plasti-dip in place while I used my other hand to peel the tape. Flawless job.