Sad day for me today no matter how much i want to protect my crossfire..some things happen. I was parking in the far end of the restaurant all by myself and as I approached the parking space i heard a large scapping sound underneath my front bumber. I stepped out and found out that the parking curb was under my front bumper. I wish Ive known better that some curbs are higher than others. Made a huge scratch under my front bumper which..luckily, cant be seen and be noticed by others except by me. I hate to feel those scratches whenever I wax my car!

 

Bummer Cyril..... I know the feeling.... My Bride did ther same thing to #2896...... Thank God I have a close friend that does paint. He fixed mine.

 

Yeh real bad luck - I'm always doing it to the front air dam on my Saab 9-5 Aero which is very low but luckily, like WMichaels, I can get touch ups done for next to nothing - look around, you may find someone who'll do the underside for little money then you won't feel so bad. Lucky it's out of sight anyway.

 

I did precisely the same thing in a little parking plaza, but worse. As I parked, I failed to notice 2 things. (1) that I was parking OVER the parking curb and (2) that there was a hunk of REBAR sticking straight up about 1/2 a foot. Naturally, I went up over the curb and past where the rebar was sticking up, so when I pulled back the rebar caught the edge of the underside of the bumper and mangled and tore a roughly 8 inch area on the underside. This is quite different from a scratch or gouge that can be filled.

So like Cyril (I realize your post is from 4 years ago) it's on the underside which can't be seen unless you literally stick your head right under, to see it. Made me sick when it happened just 2 days ago. Replacing the whole front fascia is out of the question because of the expense. It's one of those "no one else can see it, but I know it's there" problems. This may sound radical, but as the mangled area affected is roughly an 8' by say 3' area, I was thinking of getting under there with a sharp blade and as carefully and neatly cutting it away. Otherwise, when I'm washing and drying the car I won't have to 'feel' that damaged area.

The lesser of 2 evils approach. I'll try and think it through over the next several days, before I attempt this. Any other suggestions are of course welcome. Wish me luck! Otherwise, I'm loving my '05 Saphire Blue Silver Coupe.

-Mike

 

Occasionally my wife drives the Crossifre.
When she first used to park the car she always tended to pull all the way to the parking block or curb.
I explained that the Crossfire is a very short car and she does not need to pull in that far in to any space.
She is now in the habit of stopping before the curb as I do every time.
When the front of the car is near it just stop right there.

 

I recently ripped away the bottom half of my inner front wheel well liner,damn curbs.

 

I had a dream (nightmare) that I backed over a curb last night haha, sorry to hear about your injury. I'm sure it won't be a big deal to get it fixed, it just hurts in the meantime.

 

Oh man, that sucks. I have some scrapes in the underside of mine from the previous owner.

As another story, about 10 years ago my dad had bought a brand new '99 Town and Country for my mom. After having had it for about 3 days we took it to church with 6 people in the van, and in the process of parking it he stumbled upon a parking block with about 3 inches of rebar sticking up... We heard the van go over it and then my dad tried to back up... The rebar pulled the ENTIRE front fascia off the vehicle!! The guy who sold us the van couldn't believe our story when we showed up to get it repaired! If we had all gotten out and let the suspension go up a bit the fascia might have been saved. Now I always leave lots of room between the parking block and my bumper.

 

Man this is an old thread. And I believe Cyril has sold his xfire.

 

No doubt. Old thread. I just typed in 'front bumper' in 'search this forum' area to see if anyone else experienced the same type of 'injury' to their Crossfire. It's always interesting to see the responses. I'll definitely be WAY more careful around curbs in future!

-Mike

 

There's a class action lawsuit against MB for this very same thing. A semi-retired attorney got mad when he backed up (a SL model I think) and the curb pulled his front bumper off. Seams it was a bad design and so now he's suing MB.

 

That seems a little extreme, as there must be dozens of vehicles from various manufacturers that this could happen to.

-Mike

 

My wife once backed up her car into a building 20 feet behind her, no joke, I looked out the the window, got out of the car, shook my head, she does not drive the xfire. I feel for ya with the damage, I got tapped the other day by a gal driving a beater car, luckily only left impressions of her liscense bolts in my bumper and some scratches, still hurt, and she is going in the shop tomorrow, the first time is always the hardest! But, unless you want to park it and never drive it, these thing happen to ALL cars, just part of life, dosn't makeit any easier to swallow, but one moves on! Enjoy your baby while there is still petrol to be found!

 

Finally managed to nail my lower bumper lip getting on the road from an incline. That's bad enough but I also managed to bend the lip so now it runs crooked when viewed straight on. Fortunately a bumper repair crew looked at it today and think they can straighten the bumper lip out. That, and the repairing and repainting will run $300. They were redoing a coworkers back bumper when I asked them to look at mine (she managed to backup into a low wall). You are not alone.