Warning to our sensitive members, this will cause you goosebumps, and send fear through your spine, like any Tesla damage should. So avert your eyes if you are easily frightened.
For you brave souls that soldiered on, let’s talk front bumper damage!
Yeah, we talk a lot about making our Tesla stand out and accessorizing or modding it, but it’s the simplest problems or accidents that cost us the most money, such as scratches and dents. While dents will not easily be fixed/solved, light scratches and scoffs will be, and I will remind you how to save yourself a LOT of money.
My beloved ELECTRA suffered a close encounter of the 4th kind with a garage door and the painted metal siding. The damage you can see below normally costs about $1600-$3000 to fix for this car, depending on whether or not they need to remove and re-paint the whole bumper. Do note that body shops will insist to do a full removal and re-paint, for any kind of deep scratch even if it’s very small.
Below you can see the damage and it does look bad. The side of the bumper is badly scratched up…
Given I had the foresight to wrap my beloved ELECTRA in 3M 8mil Scotchgard™ Clear Bra PPF, I was really lucky.
Look closely at the “damage” and you can see that it was ONLY the 3M clear bra that was snatched and ripped away, the underside paint is untouched, tho a bit dirty and has some glue from the film on it.
The 3M urethane clear film has 10 year warranty, is highly resistant to acidic contaminants and corrosion, providing protection against bug splatter bird poop, mineral deposits, acid rain, and more. The transparent unique material also helps it to reduce oxidization due to excessive exposure to the sun or UV light. Highly recommended you wrap yours ASAP, and if you need the name of a reputable 3M certified shop in New Jersey, I will be happy to refer the shop that did mine.
Once the film was removed and the surface cleaned up (no re-painting needed) it was back looking like new
P.S. I also wrapped the headlights as they are exposed to UV, bugs and debris, just as much as the paint, and usually the clear plastic tends to fog and yellow with time. This should help keep everything looking new much longer.
