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Repairing rock chips....

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As I tend run my TR6 pretty hard, I have come up with some very ugly rock chips on the valance and wheel wells. My oversized rims and 205/70 tires stick out a bit and will sling a pebble pretty hard. My paint is a custom green and the painter lost the formulae. The PPG paint dealer came to the rescue by using his colour reader computer and gave me an amazing match. Since the car is base coat/clear coat, he suggested I use acrylic enamel for the touchup. What an amazing result! I used an ultrafine artist's brush and laid on very thin layers, let them dry and kept building up till they matched the level of the clearcoat. Not perfect but very close. And the acrylic enamel has it's own shine so I am done. Even paint with the formulae written down will fade over time and using the colour matching gadget will take this into consideration. He shot it from four different spots on the car and got an average reading. Pretty slick!

Bill
 
Hi Bill,

There is a clear plastic that can be used to cover those areas to help prevent chips. It comes in sheets and rolls, and is self-adhesive. It also is easily removeable. I don't recall a name brand right now, but it's available at racing parts sources as "leading edge tape" among other names. There was a company setting up franchises a while back, too, to sell and install similar stuff on street cars. I haven't used it, but it might help.

Years ago I painted the front valance, rockers, wheel arches and behind the rear wheels on my TR4 all black so that I could easily touch it all up with an off-the-shelf can of paint. It actually looked pretty good, but was challenging to tape off the wheel arch just right to get a nice clean look. The car also had black pin-striping, which helped make it all look right.

Good info on the touchup technique! Thanks

Alan
 
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