Hi,
I recently moved to Denver. I bought a brand new Honda Accord about 4 weeks ago and yesterday I noticed that someone slightly touched the right rear bumper. It is an minor issue but it is still annoying given that it is a new car. I plan to take a body shop so they can paint it but I wonder whether they can pain a part of the bumper or they will paint the whole thing. I have been to mechanics several times but this is going to be my first time going to a body shop. I appreciate any advise. Thank you.
Since the car is new, there won’t be a problem in matching the paint. So they’ll just paint the blemished area, wet sand it to blend it in and then shoot a coat of clear over it.
Tester
I had a neighbor when I lived in Colorado, he was a cattle rancher, and when he bought a new truck for his ranch, the first thing he’d do is fill it up with a load of rocks, so the bed would get scratched. His theory was, after that, no need to worry about his new truck getting dinged and scratched. I must say, he seemed to be a very happy man.
Just curious, will you do this for every ding on the bumper or door you get in a parking lot, or will you only repaint this one?
I believe that on a rubber bumper, they chemically strip the paint off and repaint the whole thing. That is what they did for my car when it got hit. But it wasn’t new at the time.
The shop would normally paint a portion of the cover after a repair. If they paint the complete cover it would be
- amount of damage
- a difficult color
- lack of experience of painter. this is not a dig, everybody starts off as a beginner. Nobody starts off as an expert.
edit…
another reason to paint the entire cover would be if the damage was in the center of the cover as opposed to one end.
@GeorgeSanJose your point is valid. you are right, and painting for every single scratch would not be affordable. But you know with the new car, even the smallest flaw looks bigger than it is 
I guess this time I will get it fixed. Next time, I dont know
You could go to a local autoparts store and see if they have a spray touch up paint for your car. Honda’s are available only in a few colors so some of them are readily available. Then you just was the affected area and when dry, just lightly spray over the affected area. I did this with our Honda for many years and kept it looking new for a long time.
It will not be perfect, but it does make the blemish much much less visible. Do this only if the spray can is available, the little bottles with the brush applicator never look good unless you know how to sand and buff smooth afterwards.
When the Honda gets to be about 15 years old as ours is now, you just give up on that sort of thing.
They will just touch it up. To blend the repair in though they will paint beyond the repair and feather the color coat to make any change not noticeable, then spray the clear on, sand, rub, and buff it to match. Sometimes they’ll use blender to eliminate the need to sand the edges. If they were to do the whole bumper, they may want to blend it into the surrounding panels to insure a good match, so there really is no reason to do this for a small repair.