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Bumper Facts and News

Many auto body shops send their bumper covers off to the landfill. This is not always necessary when most of the time it can be repaired by a professional reconditioning bumper repair shop, not an auto body shop. They are all around and not always known by most folks but out there, so google them, and they are also helping to save the environment one bumper cover at a time.

One of the most popular accidents in the auto world is a bumper from low-speed incidents that can more often than not be repaired and reconditioned instead of replacing and having that waste, not waste, go off to the landfill. Where if we all do our part in one way or another we can help reverse the ugly habit of just put it in the trash and let the township deal with it. This is not a blog of right and wrong, it is a word on caring and understanding and becoming aware there are choices out there not so much publicized.

Bumpers are designed to protect the vehicle’s main structure, as they are often the first part of the vehicle to absorb any impact in a collision, they are the most likely to need repairs in low impact collisions or mere bumps from a solid object.

Bumper is made from rigid plastic or semi-rigid plastic, a plastic bumper repair and reconditioning can be done whether it’s a thermoplastic or thermoset bumper, which will depend on your vehicle.

Bumpers made from thermoplastics are created by melting many small plastic pellets and then injecting the melted plastic into a mold. Once the mold is cooled, the bumper is then released from the mold, and the new bumper is manufactured. Because thermoplastics are so flexible, easy to reuse and recycle, and cost-effective, most plastic bumper covers tend to be thermoplastic.

Bumpers made from semi-rigid, or thermoset, plastics are created by injecting two different polymer materials together, permanently crosslinking to each other in a mold. The resulting bumper is durable but requires the correct knowledge of professionals in the field of bumper repair reconditioning to repair properly.

By focusing on the one area which is in need of repair and not the remaining area’s around it, you will be saving on labor and materials and once again by repairing you are not wasting and filling up more of the landfill with unnecessary pieces of material.

On bumpers specifically, a recent Roper poll commissioned by the Insurance Research Council found that seven out of ten Americans think car bumpers are too weak and those car manufacturers should include information about bumper strength on window stickers in new car showrooms. Of the 70 percent who said bumpers were too weak, half said the standard should be raised back to 5 MPH and the other half agreed the standard should be even higher, perhaps as high as 8 MPH. 72 percent felt car makers should be required to provide bumper strength information on all new cars.

Just from the 5 miles per hour "rear into a pole" crash tests were done by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the best rear bumper on a pickup truck sustained over $600 damage in 2004 (the last time the IIHS tested pickup trucks) and the worst sustained over $2,000 damage. SUV bumpers had, even more, damage in this walking speed accident with the worst sustaining over $4,000 damage.

Automobile bumpers are built to withstand up to a 5 MPH crash without damage. This is not done to ensure the safety of the occupant but rather to protect and limit the damage to the bumpers, keeping the cost of repair to a minimum. Many times, a vehicle to vehicle impacts can sustain an impact of 8 to 9 MPH before there’s recognizable damage to the motor vehicle. However, and this is a provable fact, when the bumper doesn’t crumble and absorb the force of the impact - - more of that crash is felt by the occupants.