DanMan35

Took the car out for a drive today and went through a mini dust storm. When I got back to the house I was looking for rock chips on the front of the car with my flashlight and noticed there is spider webbing on the front bumper that I never noticed before. I imagine it has been there since I bought the car but I've never taken a flash light to the car so I probably didn't see it until now.

You can see from the picture with the flashlight on the spider webbing shows, but with no flash or anything you can hardly, if at all, see any spider webbing.

What causes this? Is there any way to fix this? Will it worsen if left untreated?

MYCoupe

That looks to me like the front bumper had some sort of impact at one point. If it's the actual clear cracking then I don't see how it can easily be fixed.

DanMan35

Could be...the car had 24,500 miles when I bought it. No accident damage reported, though it doesn't mean it wasn't hit by a flying piece of something on the highway one day. What else could cause this? For example, if you dropped a tool onto the nose could that potentially cause this too? It's got the spider webbing right on the point of the nose and then on the front right edge and front left edge of the bumper too. You can't really see them unless you're shining a light on them. If they won't get worse over time then I'm okay leaving them. But if they can't be fixed and they will get worse I guess I'll be buying a replacement bumper down the road

Corvette_Ed

That's in the clear coat, and possibly in the paint. It will require a re-paint to fix.

MYCoupe

Wouldn't take a huge impact to cause that kind of damage. Someone backing into it, even lightly, while parallel parking for example can cause that damage. I don't see how a tool would cause that kind of damage. It's from compressing the bumper such as caused by hitting another car. Since it's on the bumper I doubt it will get worse. At this point I wouldn't bother with a repaint unless you have a lot of other chips caused by small rocks or other road debris.

Not So Fast

It bumped something for sure, My buddy has it only on the rear facia, very hard to see it
NSF

LowRyter

shouldn't be too expensive to have it re-clear coated.

BlindSpot

I agree. Had to be a slight bump. Could have been tapped in a parking lot. Maybe a tall 4x4 hit it, square on. The bumper will deflect quite a bit and return to original shape, but the paint, even though flexible, will only go so far undamaged.



Spider webbing like that is usually the entire thickness of the clear. Hopefully not the base coat, but you won't know until all the webbing is wet sanded out. If just the clear coat and the base is OK, it might not be that big a job.

Aggie76

I had similar spider-webbing after a whitetail doe impact my bumper a few years ago. Hard to see but I saw it every single time and couldn't leave it that way. Had an expert body shop/paint guy take care of it and so glad I did.

SSWEET

Looks like stress fractures from some sort of impact.

ruxvette

I agree...sand and clear coat. Done.

tfi racing

You will likely be making a claim, my guess is $4500 for that repair.

GREENKAR

It would probably less back in 2018, when this thread was posted.

ProfessorDeath

Looks like the car tapped another car just a bit too hard.