I've heard you can't paint a car bumper. What's up with that?

I have an older car, and someone hit my bumper pretty hard. I just painted and sanded it with acrylic model paint, 99 cents, and sprayed over it with Rustoleum Clear Enamel. I didn't spend much time trying to blend it in, but from ten feet away it looks good enough. Why can't professional body shops paint a bumper?I've heard you can't paint a car bumper. What's up with that?
Where did you hear that, its completely untrue!





Nevertheless, painting flexible auto body parts is a pain in the butt. As you may have noticed when hit hard the paint cracks.





A shop would have to strip all the paint off with special and expensive paint remover (regular strippers can ruin plastic and new paint job from absobtion of chemicals) or remove it by media blasting(which is also problematic). So it is more cost effective and there is less chance of trouble down the road to just replace the bumper (especially if they can use a crappy aftermarket replacement).





So, the truth is you most certainly can re-paint flexible bumpers, its just body shops know better than to mess with it. I think they just don't want to bother explaining it to you because they aren't going to do it anyways so, they just say it can't be done.





The job you did is ok for you to do but, i assure you it will not hold up, so you can just redo it, shops don't like redoing work for free.I've heard you can't paint a car bumper. What's up with that?
If your talking about a solid chrome bumper they are crome plated wich is electoplated using electric and water. but basically its melted on.
Some won't just paint a bumper because there is quite a bit of impact absorbing material inside the bumper. I believe it's just polystyrene. Wne you get hit in the bumper, the polystyrene breaks apart to absorb the impact. If the bumper has been hit hard enough to damage it, the polystyrene is probably shattered and should be replaced so that it will properly absorb impact if you get hit again.
professionals don't wanna paint a bumber because they can charge you more if they put a new one on.
if you find someone with to know how and is willing to. almost any car part can be painted