Many plastic bumpers are discarded because they have dents and distortions.
Polyvance's 6148 Bumper Rollers Kit makes working dents out of damaged bumpers much easier and faster,
allowing your shop to make more profit and reduce cycle time by repairing dented bumpers.
Bumpers are often dented or distorted when they suffer a collision.
The first step of the repair process on a dented bumper would be to first reshape the distorted plastic.
Polyvance's 6148 Bumper Rollers Kit makes the process much easier.
The Bumper Rollers Kit consists of three heavy-duty rollers -- one wide and flat, one ball-shaped,
and one with a sharp edge which allows you to reshape body lines.
We'll show you how to use the Bumper Rollers to remove the dent in this bumper.
Since it's hard to see where the body lines and dents are on the backside of the bumper,
first mark the location of these features with a paint pen.
Here, we have a fairly sharp body line at the top, a more rounded one below it,
and a crease on the side that is pushed in.
The next step is to heat the bumper with a heat gun to soften the plastic.
Polypropylene will get soft at about 250 degrees Fahrenheit, so you'll want to get the entire
damaged area heated so it will move back into place easier.
It's best to heat from one side only until the bumper is too hot to touch on the other side.
This will ensure that the plastic is heated all the way through.
Heat not only the direct impact area, but also about six inches around the outside
to relax any energy that's stored in the plastic there.
Keep the gun moving so you don't overheat any certain area.
We heated this bumper for about five minutes to get everything up to temperature.
Quickly touch the opposite side with a bare hand to gauge the heat input into the plastic.
Once the entire area is too hot to touch, put your gloves on and begin pushing with the Bumper Rollers.
Even though the plastic is hot, it still takes quite a bit of force to push the dents out.
Starting with the large roller, we'll first push out the dent from the direct impact.
Once that's done, we'll use the ball roller to push out the soft body line,
following the paint pen line that we had drawn before.
Likewise, to reestablish the sharp body line, we'll use the pointed roller the same way.
Keep pushing and working the dent as the plastic slowly cools.
Once the largest part of the dent is pushed out, the most time consuming part of the process begins.
This will involve massaging the distortions around the edges of the original dent
where the plastic was stretched.
Again, use the rollers where needed to push up the low spots and push down the high spots.
You may also use the blunt end of the handle to push the dents out as needed.
Keep feeling the profile and continue to work.
On this dent, we had a stretched area at the top that was particularly stubborn.
Here we are using the sharp roller to push the dent down while we use the 6450
Bumper Bag Plus as a soft dolly on the backside to keep from pushing it too far down.
Keep working the dent, reheating as needed to work on small areas, to get it as straight as possible.
After letting the plastic cool completely, sand the area with 80 grit in a DA sander.
Keep the pad as flat as possible, using the OEM paint as a guide coat to reveal the low spots.
Also make note of the areas where the paint sands off first,
as those are high spots that will need to be pushed down.
Heat the bumper if necessary, then continue to work the low spots up and the high spots down with the rollers
and other tools needed to get the profile back.
It took us several attempts, but each one got the result closer to our objective.
In the end, you can see that this dent was worked out without the use of filler.
Polyvance's 6148 Bumper Rollers Kit made the job faster and easier,
especially in redefining the shape of the body lines.
The Bumper Rollers have other uses as well, in removing dents from sheet metal fenders
and in pressing down adhesive sound deadening pads.
On sheet metal, use a paint pen to mark the location of the damage on the backside.
A great trick for doing this is to use a deep-jaw vise grip to transfer the damage on the front to the back.
Use the pen to mark the location of any body lines.
The main part of the dent is pushed out with the wide roller,
then the body line is defined with the sharp roller.
The results show that it will need a little bit of filler to finish out,
but the job is done faster and easier with the rollers than it would have been with a hammer and dolly.
Finally, here we're using the Rollers to press the sound deadening pad down into a trunk floor panel.
The variety of roller shapes allows you to get into all of the corners and depressions of the panel,
pressing out all of the air bubbles and giving you an OEM finished appearance.
Polyvance's 6148 Bumper Rollers are a versatile tool with many uses in the body shop,
especially for removing dents from plastic bumpers.
Contact your favorite auto body jobber store today to order your Bumper Rollers!