Paint Chip Repair

Why do I have a feeling you posted on an FB group yesterday about paint chips... Anyways, I'll recommend the same thing here. Honda paint pen, the best brush you can buy from Hobby Lobby, and then get Langka blob eliminator. All gonna cost you around $60 I think. The blob eliminator I think is the best bit because just like the name implies, let's you blob all the chip spots/craters and then using a fine microfiber with a card insert, flat the blob down to a flat fill. This I think is the more satisfactory result to filling in chips IMHO; better than trying to be super precise with some artisan or very tiny brush.

Oh, obviously clean the chips the best you can with something a bit abrasive and also alcohol wipes. The end of the Honda paint pen is basically that tool, so I wouldnt use anything more than that TBH. It might be relatively safe to use sandpaper or pencil eraser, but be sure to not do that on the painted plastic parts. You just gonna turn that chip into a bigger problem

SixxSpeed said:

Yeah but why half ass it? Yes, it’ll take longer, but the results are much better, too. It really isn’t that hard, from the one or two attempts I’ve tried in the past. Didn’t damage the surrounding clear coat either. With a 2500 grit sand paper that has been properly saturated, with additional water sprayed on during sanding, it would take some time to burn through the clear coat. These are brand new cars too, which should have full or close to full clear coat also.

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Can this paint blob and wet sand chip repair technique work on a ceramic coated surface? I had a chip on my door and tried a very delicate polishing compound to the touch up paint. But the compound stripped a tiny bit of surrounding ceramic. I find repairing chips on ceramic coatings not so easy

Captaindicki said:

Can this paint blob and wet sand chip repair technique work on a ceramic coated surface? I had a chip on my door and tried a very delicate polishing compound to the touch up paint. But the compound stripped a tiny bit of surrounding ceramic. I find repairing chips on ceramic coatings not so easy

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You would have to reapply the ceramic coating again. The coating is the very top layer on your paint. If there is a rock chip, it went through the coating, through the clear coat, and maybe even through the paint as well. That spot is effectively left exposed to the environment.

Any sort of wet sanding is very slowly cutting your clear coat down... The ceramic coating is on top of the clear. It will be first to go.

You can buy a wide variety of ceramic coatings. Many of them are easy to apply by yourself. If I fixed up an area on my car, I would simply recoat that section again.

I have so many rock chips and dings that I am gonna send the whole car for repaint

Question for those with experience..
Should I go with Honda shop paint repair (slightly more expensive)
Or generic paint repair shop (big and nice looking shop)

Normally I would just go for Honda but the original paint is so thin.. would the repaint be better or I should use generic paint shop (they give warranty on the paint)

After that I am thinking to go for protection film and ceramic coating. Any advice please?

d1390 said:

Hiya fellow Type R Owners!

As the title suggests, I recently got a paint chip on my hood, down to the metal, no dents at all just a chip. I touched it up with the Championship White paint pen, and it now looks like a blob. You cant really notice it, but I know its there, and it kills me inside. Its on my mind all the time and its putting me off driving it

Anyway, does anyone else have any paint chips? did you get it fixed? Does anyone have any idea on the repair process?

Here are some of my concerns:
- can it be fixed?
- have been told that a paint chip will require the entire hood to be painted?
- find someone who can fix it, however my concern is that it wont be perfect i.e colour match, orange peel
- the person who fixes it makes it worse
- painted however mismatch colour with other panels
- expensive just for a small chip

I would rather have a professional to do it, rather than myself as I dont have the necessary tools, and tend to make things worse.

I looked into dr colourchip, and even with all the good reviews, i'm not entirely convinced if they are legit and if it is, their results is not the results I want. It can still be noticeable.

I have also been told not to use mobile paint repair as the results wont be up to paint shop quality. However their before/after photos along with videos make it look perfect, however when inquiring them, they advised that they will use a brush to fill in the chip, which I already did, so I would pay a few hundreds for something I did myself that you can still notice.

Basically what I am trying to say is, can it be fixed blended in with OEM paint to perfection?

Feel free to include experiences, before/after pics, I will upload one when I get home.

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As a "seasoned" OCD perfectionist myself, learn to live with it. This type of attitude is exhausting. After many years of chasing perfection, I've learned there is no such thing. Are you perfect? Then why should your car be? I have scars from life. So does my car. It's a journey. Do your best to fix it, accept it as a part of the car's story, and move on. If you're fixing paint chips with touch-up paint, you're already going above & beyond 99.9% of the general population's level of care.

Now that's not to say let it become a piece of shit - I'm still way too anal about my car, but it's a constant creep. If you perfected a method of fixing paint chips, you'd undoubtedly move on to the next thing to stress about. It's never-ending. Set self-imposed, rational limits for you. You think Bill Gates gave a shit about paint chips?

That being said, it sounds like your car's still in good shape, so I'd recommend DIYing a 3M Pro clear bra or similar. Did it to my wife's Mazda & although it didn't turn out absolutely perfect, it's damn close... and we saved like $1K, and I learned to apply it to other areas like covering an entire hood/headlights/etc. Worth the hassle if you're anal, IMO.

SixxSpeed said:

Counter to this, a detailing god, er, friend of mine taught me something a bit different for dealing with paint chips.

First, you fill in the chip, with several coats, to make a bit of a blob of paint. Let each coat dry as required before applying another layer.

Once you get a good blob of paint in the area and it is cured, you wet sand the blob down until it is flush with the rest of the body. Use a very fine sand paper. Like 2000-2500 grit. And soak the sandpaper in water for 4-6 hours before using.

The newly applied paint is still softer than the OEM paint, and as such, wears down much faster than any of the surrounding.

The results aren't flawless but they end up looking much better than any other sort of application I generally see done

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This is what I do - I apply the paint, repeatedly (after letting coats dry), if needed, since it tends to shrink, while trying to minimize the surrounding "blob." As you say, the touch-up is softer than the OEM paint.

Come back in ~2 hours after final application - the touch-up paint should still be relatively soft vs. when fully cured. Wrap a credit card tightly in a cotton cloth like an old T shirt (I think microfiber nap is too fat). With the broad (flat) side of the card, apply car polish & lightly sand down the blob, checking frequently to see if you've leveled it to a satisfactory level. Good? Move on. It'll happen again.

There's a video on YouTube of a professional detailer (forget his name) trying his damndest to fix a keyed G-wagon w/ touch-up. I think he spent something like ~11 hours trying to repair it as best he could, as an experiment. Even with his special tools, experience, attention to detail, etc... it still ended up looking like shit.

If you want it to back to perfect, you're gonna have to pay for a professional shop to do a proper respray.

/life story

dt17 said:

I have so many rock chips and dings that I am gonna send the whole car for repaint

Question for those with experience..
Should I go with Honda shop paint repair (slightly more expensive)
Or generic paint repair shop (big and nice looking shop)

Normally I would just go for Honda but the original paint is so thin.. would the repaint be better or I should use generic paint shop (they give warranty on the paint)

After that I am thinking to go for protection film and ceramic coating. Any advice please?

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You think Honda itself is painting the car? lol

In hindsight, I should have had my '18 wrapped. Only 18,000 miles and the hood is chipped to hell and back. They used some pretty weak paint on these. Oh, and Honda only sells a "water-based" touch up kit that fills in color some, but still leaves a clear indentation where the chip was. WTF good is that? lol

keiothic said:

Langka blob eliminator.

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FWIW that's where I learned to "sand" down the blob. In my experience, regular polish produces the same result.

I know my dealer will expect chips come trade in time, however I also know my driver's door, which has been keyed (bastard) will need to be spray painted before trade in.

So for those who want to know. I went to a panel beater/painter for their opinion and they said that the entire hood would need a repaint. Why? because if they spot repair it will leave a line/mark, so then its a matter of where on the hood you want to stop the repair? which is why the entire hood needs to be repainted.

(Their English was not good so tha'ts what I understood from them)

I also did ask those mobile painters that come to your house who do airspray and said the repair will be 80%-90% but not 100%. Although their definition of 80%-90% is different to everyone.

I'll just stick to my DIY repair until it gets worse over the years and get it fully sprayed. But then again, it may just stay the same during its course of life..time will tell!

If you do get your hood repainted, I highly highly highly recommend you get paint protection film on your car afterwards. It’s literally worth it’s weight in gold and will preserve your paint for years to come. It’s not bullet proof and can be damaged too, but personally, I’d rather replace film then replace OEM paint. You can’t sell a car as being flawless if it’s been repainted in sections. At least in my mind.

There’s also something to be said about oem paint. It might not be the greatest, but we all know we would prefer buying a car that’s never been resprayed in whole or in part.