General Stone chips

[Fastfred]

My friend has a 9 month old 500 Lounge with about 2000 miles on the odo. Never used on motorways, gravel paths etc. - just a run-around for town basically.
The car is covered (front apron, bonnet, lower doors, sills, rear wings, boot lid and even the rearward part of the roof) with hundreds of small stone chips down to the black/grey primer or possibly even the galvanising.
The marks are very small, perhaps up to 1mm across but it looks a mess close up.
Anyone got anything like this? And did Fiat do anything (and I dont mean offer to respray the panels!)
Ta!

 

[suzey]

Sorry can't help, but what a shame

 

[Lloyd71]

You can buy a touch up pen and use a cocktail stick on the smaller chips, I used one on my huge chips and where the first one was you really can't tell it's been filled.
My method involved a can of isopropyl alcohol (IPA) spray and a simple Fiat touch up pen. I cleaned the chips thoroughly with the IPA, then shook the touch up pen for 3 minutes and filled in the chips with the brush (If there's too much paint on the brush, wipe it on the edge of the lid of the bottle).

I then used the car daily for a few days and once the paint had set, I cleaned the chips with IPA again but this time applying a bit more pressure so that any overfill was removed. Another layer was then added with the touch up brush before setting again. Then another wipe with IPA removed the excess so the chips were fairly flat by this point. Then I lacquered over the top with the lacquer brush provided.

The small chips won't even need 2 layers, but if they're really deep then the 2 layers and the IPA wipe downs between layers seems to work really well. The first chip I ever had is now barely visible and when I came to clean the chip to apply the lacquer the other day I had real trouble finding it!

The touch up pen can be bought from Chris @ Souls for a decent price and excellent service, and the IPA can be bought from www.i4detailing.co.uk

PS If the chips really are tiny, use a cocktail stick dipped in the paint to fill them instead.

 

[nottsfiat07]

Good tips there Lloyd, partic like the cocktail stick one, I shall remember that. Just done about 3400 miles in mine, think I got one stone chip low down on the sill, thats it. Odd how some people seem to get loads. Tar has been a bit of a pain tho, but that's bound to show up more on a white car. Oh and flies, bloody flies!

 

[Kei]

Does the same technique used for stone chips work on scratches? Someone keyed my car a week or two ago and it's fairly deep. Scratch X reduced it a lot but it's still quite obvious

I've got 1 tiny stone chip on mine after 1,500 miles and that's with a local road being recently gravelled because they cba to resurface it. Think I've been quite lucky so far *fingers crossed*

 

[suzey]

You can buy a touch up pen and use a cocktail stick on the smaller chips, I used one on my huge chips and where the first one was you really can't tell it's been filled.
My method involved a can of isopropyl alcohol (IPA) spray and a simple Fiat touch up pen. I cleaned the chips thoroughly with the IPA, then shook the touch up pen for 3 minutes and filled in the chips with the brush (If there's too much paint on the brush, wipe it on the edge of the lid of the bottle).

I then used the car daily for a few days and once the paint had set, I cleaned the chips with IPA again but this time applying a bit more pressure so that any overfill was removed. Another layer was then added with the touch up brush before setting again. Then another wipe with IPA removed the excess so the chips were fairly flat by this point. Then I lacquered over the top with the lacquer brush provided.

The small chips won't even need 2 layers, but if they're really deep then the 2 layers and the IPA wipe downs between layers seems to work really well. The first chip I ever had is now barely visible and when I came to clean the chip to apply the lacquer the other day I had real trouble finding it!

The touch up pen can be bought from Chris @ Souls for a decent price and excellent service, and the IPA can be bought from www.i4detailing.co.uk

PS If the chips really are tiny, use a cocktail stick dipped in the paint to fill them instead.

Some great advice there ...thanks Lloyd

 

[Murano16v]

My friend has a 9 month old 500 Lounge with about 2000 miles on the odo. Never used on motorways, gravel paths etc. - just a run-around for town basically.
The car is covered (front apron, bonnet, lower doors, sills, rear wings, boot lid and even the rearward part of the roof) with hundreds of small stone chips down to the black/grey primer or possibly even the galvanising.
The marks are very small, perhaps up to 1mm across but it looks a mess close up.
Anyone got anything like this? And did Fiat do anything (and I dont mean offer to respray the panels!)
Ta!

Sounds like your friends car has defective paint and a claim needs to be put to Fiat. How otherwise would the car up with chips on the roof & tailgate? The worst ones I've seen have all been red. I'm hoping white is going to be Ok, but I do try and leave a huge gap to whatever is in front of me.

 

[Fastfred]

Thanks for all your replies.
I thought, at first, that the marks were road tar splashes...when I looked closer I could feel the chips with my nails.
We are talking of dozens of chips on each panel not single isolated marks.
My friend does not want their car respraying (have you ever seen a decent respray without over spray and careless re-assembly??)
The boot is one of the worst affected areas - and no, they dont reverse flat out!

 

[nottsfiat07]

This does seem really odd for them to be where they are and also at such low mileage! Def trip to the dealer I think!

 

[Lloyd71]

Does the same technique used for stone chips work on scratches? Someone keyed my car a week or two ago and it's fairly deep. Scratch X reduced it a lot but it's still quite obvious

I've got 1 tiny stone chip on mine after 1,500 miles and that's with a local road being recently gravelled because they cba to resurface it. Think I've been quite lucky so far *fingers crossed*

It should work the same, yes, but I've only tried it on my car which is BNW and it's a non metallic colour so it's easy to get a decent cover up. On metallic colours it would be much harder.

 

[Chris123]

this stuff might help with regular stone chips - they do a kit for the 500 now- http://www.bodyguarduk.com/carlistF.html
I've no idea what the price could be. Less than a decent repaint but still not cheap I reckon

 

[pearce_jj]

mine's quite bad as well.

 

[Mollie]

According to the "paintless dent removal" chap that comes to our garage, white is the most "brittle" coloured paint, and therefore he often has to heat up the affected area before attempting to remove the dents.

 

[poggy]

Are you sure they are stone chips and not blisters in the paint. I had a BMW that had to be stripped back to bare metal from the windscreen forward as the paint had reacted to something. I think may have been me using a hot jet wash as they came up a few days after that. It was a new car and I really thought BMW would argue, but they didn't.

I would visit a bodyshop rather than dealer as they tend not to have a clue about paint.

 

[Mollie]

Any update on this thread?

 

[muttleysdad]

The only time i've ever heard of anything like this was a couple of years ago when we had a flat roof repaired and re-sealed at work.
The muppet contractors used a hi pressure jet wash to clean the gravel and rubbish off the roof before they started work, but neglected to tell the people who had parked in the car park next door and ended up spraying everyones car with gravel.
A lot of cars had to be resprayed at their expense.