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Stone Chip Repair Guide

1M views 404 replies 251 participants last post by  Breezy 
#1 · (Edited)
A common sight on everyone's bonnet is stone chips unless you've just had it re-sprayed but even then they are still inevitable!







So after spotting a few on mine I thought I would have a go at repairing them after reading a couple of repair guides. Firstly I got hold of some touch-up paint from Paints4U you can alternatively just buy a touch-up stick from the stealers but for the same price, I got a 100ml tin of paint and 30ml clear lacquer which was a perfect colour match too it also came with a fine artists brush.

I also got some IsoPropyl alcohol to clean out all the dirt, crap, polish & wax from the stone chips, once this was done i went round filling the chips with paint and making sure the paint filled the chip and not the area around it as this can easily be done if you use a brush that's too thick you need to fill the chip so that the paint is raised over the area of the chip.

once left to dry the bonnet looked like this with blobs of paint



the wet & dry paper I used was Meguiars unigrit 2500

The next job was to wet sand the blobs of paint down to the same level as the existing paint and the best way I found to do this and keep the repairs to the local area was to wrap a small bit of sandpaper around the end of a flat piece of plastic (aka a bicycle inner tube remover!) or a pencil and gently rub down the raised paint and then level it out with the rest of the surface.

I used plenty of water with fairy liquid which foamed up nicely and acted as a good lubricant and also soaked the sandpaper in some fairy liquid before hand.

some nice sanding marks afterwards!





these were easily removed using my porter cable polisher with a "4 lake & country orange light cut pad & Menzerna Intensive polish, the whole bonnet was then followed up with Menzerna Final Finish Polish (P085RD) with a "6 Sonus SFX blue finishing pad and 2 coats of Collinite 476s wax.

if you don't have a porter cable you can easily remove the sanding scratches by hand using 3M Perfect-It III fine cut compound

I can't see the chips anymore! :D





 
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#313 ·
I feel I need to add to this post a little experience I have had since reading this and getting all brave.

If you have a white clearcoated car, be aware that it will take you a number of goes to get this as close to 100% as possible.

I read the guide, got the wrong kit from paints4u thinking I would be OK with the smaller 30ml touch up kit with clear lacquer.....no no no no no, jesus what a pain in the ar5e that turns into, my chip had gone down to bare metal, so after treating it to rust protection then 2 thin coats of the white groundcoat, getting a decent amount of thin layers of basecoat but leaving enough room for the clearcoat lacquer proved IMPOSSIBLE!

So I got the 100ml basecoat pre-mixed with the lacquer!! Much easier, but be warned, you need to get a fair few layers on there to blend this in to the surrounding paint....I have on my third flattening now and the next and I think final coat is on and once flattened and polished out i reckon it'll will be about 95% blended which is about as far as I'm willing to go with all the flattening and layering and flattening having gone on.

To surmise, the guide is excellent and certainly gives you all the info on how to do a great job on stone chips (and this can be applied to RDS as well) but bear in mind on white and I would assume all light coloured clearcoats can be hard work, but totally worth it in the end! :thumb:

Cheers
 
#317 ·
hi new to the site and wondering if some one can help i had a scratch on my black cruiser so i decided to fix it with touch up paint i wet sanded it and it look great but i noticed it looks like a dent now well more like a crease when i look at it from different angles can anyone tell me why and what i done wrong and how to fix this as i say paint etc smooth no hang or dip in the repair thanks
 
#321 ·
I gave the paints4U stone chip/ scratch repair kit ago on my Evo last year after someone decided to key it.:censored:

before:


After:







unfortunatly due to how thin the original paint on the car was I was only able to put a thin layer of laquar over the base and a year later the scratch is starting to show through again.
 
#329 ·
Just a bit of advice. I have tried this a few time, and although I got rid of the chips, you could see where the lacquer of the surrounding area had changed through sanding, as the light picked up on the repair and it looked quite strange.

Anyone else found this?

I used a block to flat the area off.
 
#330 · (Edited)
After reading this thread from end to end, I felt confident in giving this a go on my graphite BMW 3 series.

I had everything I needed already - IPA, A22 paint, laquer, fine grit wet and dry, SSR1. But seeming as the Paints4u kit had such high praise, I thought I'd order one anyway!

It arrived last week and yesterday, after giving the car a good clean, I set about repairing some stone chips.

I cleaned out the chips, also getting right into some of them with a sanding pen I had also bought, cleaning down with solution provided. All nice and clean, ready for the paint (which I had given a good shake to mix up the flake, even though it's not mentioned in the instructions)

After testing on one out-of-sight stone chip (all looking OK) I went around about half of the stone chips (maybe 30 or so) on one half of the bonnet. All looking OK so far. I figured there was enough paint in each of them, so leaving room for laquer, I left the paint to dry for 4 hours.

Toward the end of the day, I went around each chip and put a blob of laquer on. Well, straight away I was worried. The colour of the paint darkened horrendously, it went almost black. But I figured this was normal and lacquered each one.

Still a bit nervous, I went to bed and apprehensively got up this morning to inspect my handiwork.

The paint hadn't lightened. I have a bonnet covered in almost black spots. What a mess!

I sanded a couple down, but it's no use. It's the wrong colour.

I've just gone around each of the stone chips with a drill bit, taking right down and put a blob into each of the A22 paint I already had.

Very, very disappointed with Paints4u given the high praise in this thread! Not only a total waste of money, but a poor quality product.

A warning to you all.

EDIT : I was hoping to be able to come back this evening (24 hrs after posting) and tell you all was well again but looks like I didn't get all the paints4u paint out of the chips. I've flatted them all down and now I've got black dots all over the bonnet.

Next stop is the bodyshop to sort this all out! *sigh*
 
#337 ·
In the first set of pics it looks like the blobs are slightly over the chip and spilt over onto the undamaged paint work? I did mine today, the blob i put in the chips are slightly raised and may have gone onto the normal paint. Does this represent a problem when i come to wet sanding them?
 
#338 ·
Is there any difference in the procedure when using metallic paint? I was sanded a scratch with metallic black paint and it seems to be dull in comparison to the rest of the paint.

I painted with base coat, then left to dry then wet sanded, polished with scratch remover and then put lacquer on top wet sanded again and then polished that with scratch remover.
 
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