BastropR350

Have a 2008 R350 with the Sports Package. While driving early in the morning with a truck in front of me, I hit a piece of tire rubber and it took out the grill and front bumper portion below the grill. Bottom line, dealer estimate to fix: $1,693.30!!!

So, while looking at other possible options to repair rather than replace, I tape up the lower front bumper portion under the grill and went ahead and replaced the broken grill. All in all, not bad considering I used black Gorrilla Glue tape (weather proof) and taped the broken front bumper under the grill (now all black; car is Borolo Red).

Well my wife takes the car shopping and calls me later saying the tape is comng off. She gets home; I look at the car and sure enough, the broken front bumper is hanging down under the grill. But under closer examination, I find skid marks on the part of the front bumper under the grill that was still okay and taped up anyway. I look at the grill and sure enough it is cracked and the outside temperature probe is knocked out of it position on the grill. My wife swears she never hit anything.

Is anyone else experiencing such damage to the front grill and bumper cover on a semi-frequent basis? To me, this is a very weak point of car since all this is simply plastic and can break with little impact.

I am thinking perhaps some kind of a skid plate or nerf bar attached under the car but extending in front of the grill area would help prevent such expensive, but apparantly easy to do, damage.

Any thoughts or suggestions? I am thinking of asking the repair shop to beef up the inside of the portion of the front bumper that frames the grill in an attempt to make this part of the front bumper less suseptible to impact damage.

supernsx

Being on the forum for a while and this is the first time I hear concern about the integrity of the front end. It may be just a freak accident....

Rturn

I have experienced nothing like that. Aside from the chips from road debris ours is fine, nor have I seen that on others. I have on a few occasions, as I know my wife has, scraped the lower portion of it over the top of a curb pulling into a parking spot and the like. But there is cracks and no damage like you have experienced. Im with Super in his synopsis.

Ted Flynn

I have been amazed after just 1 year of driving my 08 R320 at the amount of stone chips on the front bumper below the grill. You would think I went through a storm of pea gravel.

It's bad enough that I'll take it in for painting because it looks so bad.

I have 34,000 miles on it.

We'll see what the next year brings.

chilledbenz

Not on an R class, but over on the C board a lot of people have complained about the plastic mesh on the Sport being easily broken and a pain in the **** to replace, not to mention costly.

davidbho

those crack a lot...30k miles, and i took one out already, but nothing wrong with the bumpers or anything like that...is it possible she parked over the front curb or triangle thing at the front of parking spots, and airmatics lowered the car after she left, and when she came back it got caught on it as she was reversing?? kinda far fetched I dunno...

silverspecial

I got into an accordian accident where someone rearended me and pushed me 7 feet into the person in front of me. The R took a huge hit and absolutely nothing was wrong front or back. I'm of the opinion that this thing is pretty solid with a broad hit like I saw on both sides...now if it was centered to a smaller area of the front or back things could be different, and I'll guess that's what you had happen.