You can do your best to take the utmost care of your prized car. It’s always in pristine condition and you receive many compliments on just how good it looks.
During the weekly washing of your car, a ritual that keeps it looking in top nick, you find something that really disappoints you. It disappoints you because of the care and attention you invest in your car. But, unfortunately, some things cannot be helped.
Stone chips are going to happen no matter how careful you are. It’s a shame but unless your car stays parked on the drive, it’s inevitable.
So let’s cover some tips and advice on how you can fix these annoying stone chips.
First, let’s start by saying that you love taking your custom or vintage car out for a ride. If you have knowledge of the roads you’ll be driving on then you’ll know which ones are more prone to loose stone chippings. Obviously, you want to avoid the roads that have a lot of loose stone chippings.
Another important thing to think about is that most stones are thrown up in the air from the back of a car. If you have a lot of stone chips you may want to not drive too close to the car in front.
There are many things that you can do to avoid getting stone chips including having a protective film fitted on your paintwork. Stone chips do not look good and can lead to rust over time.
So what if you currently have stone chips on your car, what can you do?
Here are some tips for you:
Carefully clean the chip with some alcohol or solvent. This serves two purposes, it protects the inner paintwork from becoming rusty but will also make the new paint bind better to the chip indentation.
You want to make sure that all dirt, dust and residue is removed from the chip. You may on occasions need to use a very small wire brush to clean deeper. If you can see signs of rust then clean thoroughly and apply a special rust stopper.
Bear in mind that your car’s paintwork may consist of an undercoat, topcoat and in some cases a metallic finish and a clear lacquer. A lot of paint touch up kits consist of thick paint which makes the job a lot harder. We have found that the smaller nail varnish style of pots work the best.
Apply a base coat. Use a light base coat for light paints but you can get away with any colour of your topcoat is dark paint.
Apply the main coat. Build this up using 5 to 8 very thin layers of paint and be sure to leave about 60 minutes in between the different layers.
Once you have finished applying the 5 to 8 coats gently rub down with some wet and dry sandpaper to take the new paint below the surface of the old paint. Blend in the new paint with the existing paint using a circular motion.
Lastly, apply the metallic or clear lacquer top coat.