Tiny Stone Chips

**jhorton** · 03-06-2007, 02:33 PM

I have a 2004 Silver Hyundai Santa Fe. I noticed recently I am getting a few tiny stone chips on the front part of my front fenders. I think if I tried to touch them up they would look more noticeable. They are very tiny black dots, almost pin size. Is there anything I could try to make them look less noticeable?

**Accumulator** · 03-06-2007, 02:49 PM

jhorton- Welcome to Autopia!

On our silver vehicles, most of my touch-ups are at least as noticeable as the original chips were. *Sometimes* the touch-ups help, but not all that often.

Other than polishing and using products that don`t leave a white residue in the chips (especially around their edges), about all I can recommend is to try to live with them. When they finally get too bad I have the involved panels painted, but that opens a whole new can of worms, especially when it comes to trying to match silver.

In a long-ago magazine article, a museum curator was asked why the cars in a pretigious collection had so many stone chips. His reply: "real cars have stone chips".

**touchofdetail** · 03-06-2007, 03:56 PM

Or U Can Buy A "clear Bra".

**thesacrifice** · 03-06-2007, 03:59 PM

which will prevent further chipping but do nothing to address the current ones

**cole** · 03-06-2007, 04:17 PM

Originally Posted by jhorton

I have a 2004 Silver Hyundai Santa Fe. I noticed recently I am getting a few tiny stone chips on the front part of my front fenders. I think if I tried to touch them up they would look more noticeable. They are very tiny black dots, almost pin size. Is there anything I could try to make them look less noticeable?

Silver is tough. With many colors, you can use a common felt tip pen to touch up the dots. I suspect you might be able to find an old fashioned crayola in gray. Search out a big box of crayons and find a gray or silver one. Just a dot on the pit topped with sealant should solve most of the problem. I use Zaino and whatever I put on under it, stays under it. If you ever find a source for a silver or gray felt tip pen, tell us. In my experience, stone pits marked with a felt tip - or crayon - disappear from view and stay invisible for long periods.

Regards from Arizona,

Cole

**jpk** · 03-06-2007, 04:39 PM

I have a very difficult paint to match (Mustang Cobra with Mystichrome color shifting metallic paint) and have had these same tiny pin-head sized chips. I do have a 3M clear bra covering many panels already, BTW. Chips can still happen other places.

I have had good results with factory touch up paint, a #00 paint brush, and Langka. The Langka chip repair kit is a kind of polish that you use to level off your touch-up paint blob and remove excess paint from around the area you wanted to fill. The result is that the white chip mark is gone and you have filled it up with matching paint that isn`t slopped above and outside of the area you wanted to cover.

The process takes a little time, but no worse than trying to polish out swirls. You very gently fill in the chip with your fine #00 or #0 paint brush. (I got mine at a craft store, you can probably find them at a shop that sells model airplanes and trains too.) Allow the paint to dry for several hours or overnight. Then you rub on the dried paint blob with the Langka until it is polished smooth and the excess paint is gone.

The first few times I tried this technique, I kept removing all of the touch-up paint and had to start all over again. The good news is that if you screw up, you can remove the paint with Langka and have a re-do. You rub just enough to take off most of the blob, a teeny tiny bit of excess may still remain, but you will never notice it from more than 12" away.

The result is that no one else can see whitespots or ugly touch-up paint marks on your car and the color is matched very well. Most of the time, I can`t even find the touch-up spots even when I am standing near the car, they are so well matched. I only see them when waxing and my face is right up next to the paint.

I thought that with metallic color-shifting paint it would never match, but it does. The color shifts on the touch-up spots match the rest of the panel and are of the same shade. I have to imagine that you can achieve similar results on silver with a little bit of patience and a deft touch with the brush.

The one thing I never got filled in was a tiny 2" scratch. I could not get the paint to stay in the scratch mark after rubbing with Langka. The Langka just kept pulling the touch-up paint off because the scratch was so thin and it didn`t fill up with much paint. I think it requires a much more steady hand and gentle touch to do fine scratches than it does for tiny rock chips.

**Accumulator** · 03-06-2007, 06:17 PM

jpk- Welcome to Autopia! That`s a great point about using the right brush :xyxthumbs

I`ve gradually gone with smaller and smaller ones...the last touch up I did was with a 000 and I liked it even better than the 00.

For matching silver (besides "good luck"

) you might check with a paintshop that does a lot of whatever car you`re doing. The guys who did the last paintwork on the silver MPV found that Spiess-Hecker paint wasn`t quite as noticeable as whatever they used the last time. Not great, but better. On the Audis, they`ve done a lot better than the stuff that comes in the factor touchup bottles. Different paint companies turn out slightly different versions of the "same" paint.

And PaintScratch.com is very good on some colors (less good on others).

I still can`t get silver right though...from some angle, usually the one that everyone looks at, it simply shows

But FWIW, the painter who did the recent work on my Jag spotted in two chips on the hood and I have to *really* work to find `em. No way anybody else I know could`ve done as well, that was a case of the person doing the work (and he knows how to blend/tint paint too).