Road rash

[Zedebee]

Hello forum,

I bought my Monaco blue coupe from a trader a couple of months ago. Apart from a few obvious touch-ups, the paint looked in really good condition and I’ve been keeping her mostly in the garage. However, I had to leave her out in the heavy rain recently and literally hundreds of micro stone chips and some bigger ones appeared on the bonnet, front wings and even a few on the roof; hopefully the picture will show.

My questions are: do traders have some clever cover-up that they use to make the paint look better than it is (yeah, obviously, but these chips had been concealed; and secondly, what’s the best way to make good, other than a respray?

[Nictrix]

They have all sorts of tricks to hide problems.
One of my neighbours used to work for Audi and she said that some would use a sharpie to colour in stone chips.
A friend of mine bought a Focus from Arnold Clark and the first time he washed it his sponge turned blue and revealed large scratches in the door panel that we both didnt see while inspecting it before buying. They did fix it after having it pointed out though.

[john-e89]

You’ve been color magic’d I’m afraid.

[john-e89]

It’s a long long job but you can sort the chips without a respray.

You need to sand the chip edges to get rid of the sharp edges with a sanding pencil for example, then fill the chip with paint and lacquer to above the surrounding panel, let it dry 24hrs, then knock the high paint back to the same paint level as the panel with a Festool blade for example as below. Then wet sand with 2-3000 grit and polish with a fine pad to finish. That’s each chip if you want it completely gone.

You did ask.....

[Zedebee]

Or I could just keep it colour magic’d I guess a festool could make the existing touch-ups a little less obvious too. Thanks for the advice.

[tomscott]

Chippex is a great solution if you have patients and do it properly.

I have a 2004 911 4s 88k dark blue like yours and after about a week managed to sort every chip and although not perfect it looks pretty dam good.

I went a bit further than the instructions and used a heat gun for a couple of seconds, leaving, sanding back then used a DA and did a few passes on each chip building it up and taking it back and it worked a treat.

Need to do the same with my Z4M too been impressed with the results

[Zedebee]

Thanks tomscott. Fortunately I like spending time in the garage; it’ll give me something to do with the cold winter months closing in. The many chipex vids on YouTube make it look easy with perfect results for little effort, but I’m guessing it’s not quite like that.

[tomscott]

Depends on your definition of perfect. If it’s covering a chip then ye. It’s half of one and half of another you can spend hundreds of hours covering up chips to make them look good and if there are lots it’s easier to have the panel resprayed.

If the chips aren’t deep like rash it’s amazing what a good cutting compound will do. The ends of my skirts were heavily rashed and with some time cutting compound and a few passes with a da they are pretty much gone.

But if you think the car is still factory paint might be worth spending the time. It’s considerably cheaper from a money point of view doing it this way but from a time perspective it’s very intensive and depending on how perfectionist you are each chip might get 3 or more attempts to make it flat.

[Allan280]

Hi
I have used Chipex on my Ruby Black Roadster you are right not as easy as on the sales videos but with time and multipull applications you can fill in the chips and the colour match is also good.

[Zedebee]

Ok guys. Throwing cash at the issue, more to learn about the techniques than anything else, I got a Festool denibber AND a chipex kit. The chipex kit gives you a generous amount of paint (if you go for the bigger one) and the colour match does appear to be excellent. I found the “dab and smear” technique not very good and difficult to get the excess paint off the surrounding paintwork. Also, on tiny chips, the paint just came straight out again. I had the best results pulling the end off the dabbing tool and just touching in pinpricks of paint and building them up. The drying time is quick so it doesn’t take long to fill up deeper chips. After leaving overnight (paint seemed to benefit from a “cure”), I knocked the high bits back with the Festool. What a tool, it works like magic and I didn’t have to do any sanding. Took me an hour or two each evening during the week and a polish with Megs 105/205 at the weekend; now I have a half decent bonnet and wings again. Front bumper next will be more of a challenge as it appears to have been extensively touched up in the past. Pics to follow when I get some good light.

P.s. tomscott was right about the impact of a good cutting compound on the rash. I was using just the 205 previously to no avail, but the 105 has improved things significantly.