How to remove a painted bumper dent with a heat gun

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OVERALL DIFFICULTY INDEX: 3/10
IF YOU HAVE NO TOOLS, YOU SPEND $60 TO GET THEM FOR THIS JOB
IF YOU HAVE NO EXPERIENCE YOU SPEND 1 HOUR TO CARRY OUT THIS JOB
RISK OF BURNS, SEE BELOW

BEFORE YOU START

Be careful not to touch the head of the heat gun or heated parts with your bare hands.

DISCLAIMER:
Our pictorials are of informative nature and do illustrate works carried out by ourselves at our own premises for our own use and satisfaction.
Readers who envisage to carry out similar works inspired by the below method shall do this at their own risks and liability.

Context of a dented car bumper

The supermini bumper was dented following a minor accident when moving backward and hitting another vehicle . The damages are shown to the left and the repaired bumper is shown to the right.
The repair lasted for less than an hour and allowed to:

Reshape the bumper
Pull out the bumper to its initial position
Properly refit the rear sensor

This tutorial does not show how to paint or repaint the bumper.

Before

After

Note how a rubber bumper protector and and carbon fiber vinyl adhesive band were added to hide the paint scratches:

Preparatory works for rear bumper dent removal

Start by taking out the inner fender liner (mudguard).

Inspect well your vehicle in order to make sure:

No other damage is there, apart the dent in the plastic, i.e. no steel or structural parts of your vehicle are dented.
No wire harnesses have been cut or damaged
You can easily reach the dented part of the bumper

Then pull out your rear parking sensor to the max to avoid applying any heat to it

Removing the car bumper dent with a heat gun without damaging the paint

Use your heat gun for this bumper repair, the hair dryer will not provide enough heat.
If you have no heat gun and you don't intend to buy one, you can use boiling water to fix a bumper dent.

Heat the damaged area as uniformly as you can, while holding your heat gun at some distance, also moving it continuously not to damage the paint.
In this case, the surrounding limit of the dent is heated first, then the heat gun is moved progressively towards the center.
Again, do not keep the heat too long in the same place as this will damage the paint and possibly the plastics. Keep moving the heat gun all the time and do so for one to two minutes.

Immediately pull out the bumper dent with your hand, wearing split cow leather gloves, and pushing the dented plastics little by little from inside towards outside.

Patiently, you will end up reshaping your bumper to its original shape, with no damage to your paint.

Proceed with the polishing of your paint scratches, and if needed, add some accessories to hide the ones that cannot be removed.
If you do so, you will need to add those to both sides of your vehicle, i.e. to the one that was not damaged too.

How to remove a painted bumper dent with a heat gun

Context of a dented car bumper

Preparatory works for rear bumper dent removal

Removing the car bumper dent with a heat gun without damaging the paint

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