The mechanic is closed right now since its 630 but about 30 minutes ago I got rear ended at about 5 mph and the back bumper is bent downwards now (their car is lower off the ground than mine). I got the drivers name and telephone number so I can ask them to pay for it. But will the mechanic just have to bend the bumper back into place or will this require serious work? There isn’t any real structural damage that I can see, the bumper is just bent downwards. I am going to the mechanic tomorrow but if I can get a guesstimate here then why not. I do not know if there was any mechanical damage but I am guessing not since it still runs fine, I assume alot of the impact was absorbed just bending the bumper
what happened to my title? It should read “I just got rear ended, how much would it cost to fix it”. I have no idea how that happened.
Is fixed.
I need a little more info here. If this is an old clunker, then bending the bumper back will be okay and cost very little. If this is a new(er) car, then it will probably cost a lot more than you think to get it to look like new. Probably you will have to replace the bumper, which will cost you around three to four hundred dollars. If it has to be painted, you can double that. There’s probably more damage to the body than you think. I had a 95 Thunderbird that I was rear ended in, and the only damage was a slit in the bumper. It had to be replaced, and with paint and everything it cost around six hundred dollars.
By the way, I have had very bad luck getting people to pay me for damage they caused. I would have called the police to get them to write an accident report. The person who hit me in the t-bird for example did not have insurance, and I would have had a hell of a time getting my insurance company to pay if I hadn’t had an accident report.
It’s easier than you think to get some hefty structural damage. I got rear-ended a while back (dude didn’t have insurance, the rat-bastard), and it looked like the bumper was just bent (like yours, his car was lower than mine). Turned out that the frame needed fixin’, the trunk piece was distorted slightly, and a crapload of other little things.
Wound up getting most of the parts refurbished and a new bumper. Total came out to just under $1000.
That’s because you didn’t have the good fortune to be struck by my pickup truck. The last person who had this opportunity was a nice young girl who was (in my opinion) stupid enough to pull into the main road, chicken out, and then stop with me on ice behind her. I didn’t say an unkind word to her – I knew very well what my responsibilities were.
No cops involved; we traded info and went on our ways. She kindly found three estimates and sent them. The bumper looked slightly scuffed and that was all, but all of the estimates involved replacing parts and repainting. In the end I happily wrote her a check for somewhere around $600. That was on a 2001 Volkswagon Cabrio. I can only imagine what a proper dented-in bumper would cost.
1999 ford ranger. Since its a truck there isn’t a risk of the trunk being distorted like SPOOFE had to put up with. I don’t personally care if it looks like new as I intend to sell the truck anyway (I have wanted to sell it for months). And spending $1000 on superficial repairs to a 6 year old car with 101k miles that is only worth $6000 seems a waste to me.
This person ‘seemed’ cooperative and gave her ID and telephone number w/o resistance. So maybe i’ll get lucky and its just superficial damage and she’ll cut me a check.
Well… I have a 1995 Ranger, and got rear-ended by a chick in a Honda Civic a few years back.
Same damage- bumper appeared to be tilted downward at about a 30-40 degree angle.
I went to the dealership, had a pow-wow with the guy at the parts counter, and walked out with a pair of new bumper mounting brackets for something like $25 each.
Went home, got my breaker bar, a piece of pipe, a 13mm socket (take note, it’s a 13 mm, which isn’t in all socket sets), and lots of liquid wrench. I then proceeded to go to town taking the bumper and brackets off.
Re-mounted brackets, re-mounted bumper with some help from a buddy, and it was as good as new, and only took me an hour or two. Plus, I got a $150 check from her insurance company in the bargain!
You should be able to wiggle up under the tail-end with a flashlight and pretty easily see if the bumper brackets are bent out of shape or not.
Well… I have a 1995 Ranger, and got rear-ended by a chick in a Honda Civic a few years back.
Same damage- bumper appeared to be tilted downward at about a 30-40 degree angle.
I went to the dealership, had a pow-wow with the guy at the parts counter, and walked out with a pair of new bumper mounting brackets for something like $25 each.
Went home, got my breaker bar, a piece of pipe, what I think was an 18 mm socket (it wasn’t in most socket sets, and I had to buy it separately), and lots of liquid wrench. I then proceeded to go to town taking the bumper and brackets off.
Re-mounted brackets, re-mounted bumper with some help from a buddy, and it was as good as new, and only took me an hour or two. Plus, I got a $150 check from her insurance company in the bargain!
You should be able to wiggle up under the tail-end with a flashlight and pretty easily see if the bumper brackets are bent out of shape or not.
I was rear-ended in my 1999 Jeep Cherokee a few years ago. I was stopped along with the rest of the traffic, and the girl in the Grand Am who was merging onto the freeway was more interested in her stereo than the traffic. (I think I started a thread about it in 2001.) Her bumper looked like a bow tie after hitting my trailer hitch. The impact pushed me into the car ahead of me. Naturally, she had no insurance.
It looked as if my Jeep was barely damaged. Just a little scratched paint on the bumper, and there was a little dent in the rear hatch. When I got to work I discovered that one of the passenger doors was a little hard to open and rubbed a little when closing. The Cherokee has unibody construction, rather than body-on-frame. The ‘frame’ part of the unibody was bent at the trailer hitch mount.
My insurance paid for the damage, and my rates didn’t go up cince it wasn’t my fault. The Jeep was repaired at a Jeep dealer, including accurate straightening of the body (which was barely tweaked). They said it would be cheaper to replace the bumper with a new one than to re-paint it. Total cost: about $4,000.
I have a 1997 Mazda B2300, which was built by Ford and is a Ranger under some different body panels. I was rear-ended a little over a year ago; we were both moving at the time, so it’s hard to know just what the impact speed was. The impact was not particularly violent, so I don’t think it was all that great.
My bumper was displaced (pushed forwards) and slightly kinked at the point of impact - this was all pretty obvious on visual inspection.
A thorough inspection at a body shop, fortunately, revealed nothing else. The bumper was replaced, as were the mounting brackets. Since the bumper was chrome, no painting was needed. I don’t have the bill handy, but I think it wound up being about $400-450.
Just getting the brackets replaced and putting the bumper back in place is only $69. I don’t think I need a new bumper or pad since mine is not dented in any way, only the brackets appear dented, the bumper is fine from what I can tell.
What is a pad exactly? I thought it was the rubber on your bumper. He wanted to replace the pad, the bumper and the brackets but since the bumper is not dented and the plastic coating on the bumper isn’t damaged I didn’t see any point in that. But what are the pads exactly?
The pads are the rubber on the bumper. On a 99 ranger, you can probably just replace the brackets.