We had a couple of very minor fendor benders with our car over the past couple of weeks. There is almost no damage, except for some minor dimples on the front bumper. I thought maybe I could fix it to the good enough point so I decided to try to remove the front bumper and manipulate the plastic back a little. If you are similar to me (a fairly handy engineering minded person, but not an auto mechanic), let me save you a few hours of time with the knowledge that I couldn't get it off and got stuck. If you are an auto mechanic type, and how to get past where I got stuck, please post a comment with that info. Anyhow here's what I managed to do:
At this point I got stuck. The bumper was pretty free, except it was still held at the top left and right. I tried to remove the headlight to see what was holding it. I think there are at least 4 screws holding the headlight in. Two of them are obvious and easily accessible under the hood. The third is kind of accessible if you pull back on the bumper a little bit. The headlight is still not free after removing these and I could see a fourth screw that there was no way to get at with the bumper still on.
In looking in from the top with the hood open I was able to see a screw that was attaching the bumper to the metal frame. I was able to get my hand up to this screw from underneath. I believe it is a philips head screw with a 10 mm hex head also. There is no room to fit a right angle screwdriver in to where it is to remove the screw. I also tried to get a wrench on it, but the screw head is surrounded by a square bracket that makes getting a wrench on it impossible. I don't see how a socket would fit on it if the lower profile right angle screwdriver could not fit. What bothers me about this is that I'm not sure I see how this screw is put in for assembly. The only thing I can think of is that the bumper gets screwed to the metal piece and then the entire thing gets attached to the rest of the car. I think the wheels would have to be removed to have access to attaching this metal piece.
Even after getting the bumper free, there are a lot of cable assemblies attached to it (lights, sensors, etc.). I was hoping I would be able to pull the bumper slightly away from the car and not have the remove all this stuff, but that might be pretty unrealistic.
Again if you know how to get past where I got stuck, please post a comment. We'll probably be taking this to a body shop now. Any thoughts on how much a new bumper should cost? Or maybe they can get it to the good enough state without full replacement.