Painting vs Not Painting new front bumper cover?

I need to replace my front bumper cover as the current one is pretty dinged up. The rest of the truck is in great shape. I can buy a new unpainted OEM bumper cover (textured black) for $200. I expect that to paint it would be $500 or more. Would it look dumb to have a black bumper cover on a magnetic grey tacoma TRDOR?

 

Yes. But would it look $500 dumb? Only you can decide.

 

I ordered an aftermarket bumper for a Honda Odyssey off of ebay. You could have painted to your OEM color for a little extra money before it was shipped. turned out perfect. You might look into it and do a google search. There are places who sell these and ship them and paint them also for a surprisingly good price. IS the $500 price tag with you having it painted locally or is that done by the bumper supplier you are ordering from? seems like mine was $200 painted for a honda odyssey.

 

I don't see the dings that would cause me to spent the $200 for a new bumper in the first place

When I wrecked my front end I ended up going with the unpainted black bumper and black aftermarket flares.

It's up to you but I think your truck looks fine as is. Good Luck!

 

Your bumper looks good to me from here lol

 

bumper looks fine to me, I wouldn't bother replacing it.

As far as what it would look like? prob similar to any mexican gardener's truck. wouldn't say it looks dumb, just less complete.

 

I think it could look fine IF you also plastidip the front grill, rear bumper(if chrome) and chrome badges with flat black. I did it to my sons and I think it looks great and has held up very well. Ill add a pic tomorrow if interested.

 

Lots of after market steel bumpers out there.

 

Food for thought: As soon as, or shortly thereafter installation, your brand-new bumper is going to get brand-new dings, tar spots, bugs and definitely a dump-truck filled with whatever, pulling out in front of you with a clapped-out flapping tarp over the load leaving a dust-storm as he accelerates to 45 mph. (spring is here)

There goes the shiny new bumper.

The current one on it looks pretty nice. $500 is a lot of money.

Just sayin.

 

I did exactly this and it ran $360 for the bumper painted with free shipping. Paint was a good match to my 05 Super White base model. Quality was decent, there was one small run on the bottom edge that you can't see without getting under the truck and I don't like that they folded the bumper to fit it in a smaller box. Ended up with some fine cracks in the paint in where the sides meet the middle section. For me it was worth it since I was going from a stock black bumper to white and all the issues really aren't visible in daily use.

Got it from here: https://paintapart.com/collections/...-o-flare-holes-w-o-spoiler-holes-front-bumper

Here's the bumper installed.

 

Like the others said, in this pic your bumper actually looks to be in great condition. Is there more damage on the sides? A brand new, unpainted, black bumper will look 100x worse than your current bumper.

Unless there's more significant damage than we can see here I'd look into refinishing your existing bumper before buying a new one.

 

steel

 

if the damage on your bumper are from rock chips or parking scratches, you can always just have the bumper repainted. then install some ppf to prevent getting rock chips in the future.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I do fear shipping a painted part because of what happened to you. Otherwise, was it difficult to install?

 

This ^ the same thing I did,easy peasy.

 

Nope, regular bumper cover install. Remove lots of bolts and clips, pull the cover then reverse it all. Can't remember if I had to pull the head lights or not, but they are easy to remove.

 

My opinion, get the new one and get it painted.

As others mentioned, your current one looks fine from the picture and you can put plugs in those license holes if you want. But if you're just not satisfied with the bumper, then change it. A black bumper would look a bit out of place, but not really dumb. It's just I would personally get it painted and be done with it. I'd find a way to paint it myself if I wanted to save cost and learn at the same time.

 

you have to remember not to drive into the desert catci after you've had too many coca colas

 

I had to replace my front bumper cover after a bad scrape. Decided to leave the replacement black. I periodically hit it with a black trim restorer.