2020 DRW. A guy cut me off at a gas station and in the process of avoiding him I clipped the pole at the end of the fuel island. Took the halogen headlight out, bent the bumper and put a small dent in the front fender. Made a insurance claim. Down here in south Texas superduty headlight and bumper are a dime a dozen because a lot of folks swap for led and aftermarket bumpers. So I picked up a headlight and front bumper for $300. Now the fun part I went to 3 Collision centers, one sent me packing because I had my own parts, the other 2 would do the work, but a problem. In the accident, the bumper end bent back and bent a bracket. At the tip of the fender where it meets the bumper there is a bracket that is spot welded to the trucks front structure. The fix is to replace the entire front structure of the truck. ALOT of stuff has to come off. Estimated 16 hrs labor. $3500 to repair just the bracket and the guy said that was cheap. When I asked can't you just straighten it? It's behind the bumper you cant see it. The answer was no, must be oem. you can't change just the bracket. Needless to say I was not happy about having the entire front of the truck taking off and put back on with no problems. I'm sure. So I did what any red blood American would do and did it myself. Took about 6 hours, the bracket was fairly easy to straighten, left the small dent and put the $6500 check in my pocket. The check didn't include the bracket, that was just headlight, bumper and dent repair. The entire thing would have been $10000. No wonder my insurance rates are crazy.

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The repair shop is likely covering their liability in the repair, thus their insistence to replace OEM parts to the letter, I would guess. Unless there's some underlying structural necessity, perhaps?

 

That's what shops tell you when they don't really want to take a job, but also don't want to flat out say no.

 

One guy said he needed to go in the office and get a tape measure. Came out 10 sec later and said talked to manger (not) and not doing it. So definitely the case.

 

I agree. Lawyers! This was a prime example of why our insurance rates are going crazy and it's not all the insurances fault. You have an accident where I was going maybe 2 mph and a 10k bill to repair where I did it for $300 and a few hours labor. Now I don't expect the Collision folks to buy used parts off Facebook, but these cost are nuts.

 

Looks like Ford uses the cheapest parts they can find. That looks like a lot of damage for 2mph........

 

It's a question of mass and inertia. Lot of weight in motion behind that 2mph collision.

If it were a Yugo, then no harm no foul. A Super Duty, well...

 

The bumper did it's job. Kept it out of the grille and off the fender. Of course those big head lights are going to eat it everytime, just big plastic boxes. The bumper is crazy it has nine brackets on it plus the two mounted on the truck. They are between $50 - $250 each, 6 plastic parts $50 - $100 plus valance, plus $1200 for the outer shell. Add in fog lights the thing must be like 3k+ new. 5 minutes on Facebook $200.