I need help figuring out what materials I can use to repair my front bumper. I made the mistake of leaving a hiking pole on a shelf in my garage, and it "poked" my front bumper, leaving a perfect bullet hole. I did not even realize it happened for a long time. I have a few inquiries in to body shops and they want several hundred dollars to repair it. The hole is a centimetre or about the size of a dime. I am thinking this is something I can repair on my own for a lot less. I do not need it to look perfect (although that would be nice). I've seen products from Bondo for doing repairs, but I am not even sure what I need. Is the bumper material plastic, metal or a resin? Has anyone attempted a repair like this? Anything would be better than the "bullet" hole I have now, but I am not ready to shell out hundreds to fix this stupid mistake.

 

I feel you. Here is what I would do. On a search for "Automobile Panel Retainers/plugs/rivlets I returned a lot but picked this as an example: https://www.summitracing.com/parts/rnb-45843
If you want simpler, just pick up a 1/2" electrical knockout plug and paint it a black semi-gloss or satin to match the bumper, adjust the "hole" with a carpet knife or a rat tail file and just pop it in. It shouldn't look weird. European cars uses plugs to cover jack-point access holes all over the place.

 

Many videos on how to fix a bumper hole.

 

I still need to know what material the bumper is made out of. Is it plastic? I ordered the Bondo 806 bumper/minor scratch kit ($12) to fill in the hole, hoping it is plastic. My next question is going to be what to do about paint. From what I am reading, touch up pens are not going to work on the bumper and it sounds like I need to use a spray paint. I was looking at kits on https://www.paintscratch.com/ and their spray kit runs for about $90. Considering I had an estimate of about $800-900 from a body shop to repair this, if I can get the job done with these materials, and have paint leftover to take care of other scratches on the car, I'll be a happy camper.