Thread: rock chip esperience

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Here's a link to one of the factory five forums. The discussion is paint chips on open wheeled cars. Some think they have none due to the magical properties of their paint, but these days, just about all car paint is a similar urethane product. Last season, I noticed a high buck, pro-built '36 with fenders at the Goodguys show that had an amazing number of paint chips on the front of the car. Obviously the car gets driven plenty, but it was finished only a few years ago. As expected, I've got several chips on the front of my fendered car after driving almost 4,000 miles in Colorado. We also have a very high rate of broken windshields, due to all of the rocks being thrown around.

What's your experience with paint damage on an open wheeled car?

https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/show...69-In-the-Rain

I don't have an open wheeled car, but my truck might as well be. It gets rock chips and I think that there's only 2 ways to prevent them. 1. Quit driving it. 2. Put the stock tires on it and keep install huge flaps etc. (On an open wheeled car, full fenders would be the only sure fix I'd guess.) I'm not into either of those so I will just keep driving it. Haha

One thing I did do to help save the bottom of mine was I put rock guard on the lower portion of the body and it has helped tremendously with helping reduce the rock chips. Some of the front rock chips you may be seeing is probably from other traffic coming at you or in front of you. I had a semi coming at me throw a rock into my windshield last year and put a nice chip into it. I got another in the front of the hood from some moron spinning on gravel at a stop sign. And I had plenty of room between us. It's always something.

I've also been seeing a lot of guys using 4mm or thicker clear vinyl and applying to areas of rods to reduce rock chips and bug splatter.

I try to never ride behind an open wheeled car. Pretty obvious why.

To me, when you choose to build a hiboy that you intend to drive, you accept that you're going to have rock chips. It's just part of having a bad boy, open wheeled car. I live 0.6 miles back on a gravel (that's "metal" to our friends way, way down south) road, and depending on the surface condition the intensity of thrown rocks can vary a lot. Freshly graded, if I drive slow to minimize dust I'll have small rocks bouncing off of the hood from the rear tires, carrying up and over, falling down from above. If the road is too wet, I'll have a fine mist that carries up and over, and it can coat the entire top, trunk and sides, leaving only the hood showing body color. I've also learned that if I hang my elbow out the window, which is my normal driving position, the rocks thrown from the front tires have enough speed that they HURT!

I chose the hiboy look, and spent a lot of time trying to get the stance just right to please MY eye. For me putting any type of fenders on it would totally defeat the purpose, and ruin the look that I wanted, but that's just me, pleasing only me. If the rock chips get so bad that they affect the look, I'll paint it again. I had one young guy looking at the car once, with a heavy layer of road dust apparent and I commented that I should have stopped to wash off the grime. His comment, "No man, that shows that you're out there gittin' it, and that's cool" made me smile a bit. I'll take the chips.

I just sold my hiboy after 20 years, and am building a new one, a '34, part of life. I pulled up on the highway turn around one day and stopped at the stop light and it seemed like 5 seconds or so a rock fell next to me in the seat, I thought somebody was throwing rocks but realized it came outta my rear tire tread, like Roger mentioned, just imagine how many are not hitting your car!!
I will describe below how to fix a rock chip and be pretty much invisible, honestly you wont see them this is for clear coat vehicles, I have done about 1/2 dozen at a time by marking them with masking tape to show where they are at in process.
Take a wooden dowell about 1" in diameter and cut it so its about 1 1/4" long, cut some 1000 grit sandpaper into discs 1 1/4" round and contact adhesive the disc to the end of the dowel.
Take your left over base color paint and shake it, I use a small syringe and suck up some of the paint at the middle of the can, if you put your paint brush into the paint can the metallic or pearl floats on top and it won't match as well so your getting paint from below that line. squirt the syringe into a small container and dip a small hobby brush in it, let it dry somewhat so its not runny, after cleaning the chip with prepsol or similar cleaner put paint into the bottom of the chip and let it dry. The color should be well below the surface of the surrounding paint
Mix up some clear coat, take your small hobby brush and put the clear on top the color, let it dry 20 minutes, add more, repeat this until the clearcoat is built up higher than the surrounding clear coat. Let it dry 24 hrs
Take your wood dowell with the sand paper glued onto it and squirt the chip with water and use the dowell with your finger tips to sand down the clear coat till it is flat with the surrounding clear coat. Switch over to 1200 then 1500, this prcocess goes fairly fast as your only doing a chip.
Use your buffing compound, or hand rubbing and polishing compound to buff out the flattened chip.
I could show you the chips I have fixed and you won't see them, I dang near can't find them, the only way is to look possibly for a off color spot, you can't see them in the gloss, which is generally where chips show up, since the clear is flattened and polished its pretty much non existant. I showed the new owner the spots fixed and he couldn't even see them and they where large chips. I hope this helps somebody if chips bother them, or wear them as badges of glory your driving your ride!

I have fenders on everything and live down a gravel road a ways. No matter how slow I drive within reason, I got rock flying all over the place. There's always rocks in the bed of the 53 and my Ram has mud flaps and running boards and I still got rocks hitting the windshield and landing in the box. Just part of driving I guess.

Originally Posted by daveS53

Here's a link to one of the factory five forums. The discussion is paint chips on open wheeled cars. Some think they have none due to the magical properties of their paint, but these days, just about all car paint is a similar urethane product. Last season, I noticed a high buck, pro-built '36 with fenders at the Goodguys show that had an amazing number of paint chips on the front of the car. Obviously the car gets driven plenty, but it was finished only a few years ago. As expected, I've got several chips on the front of my fendered car after driving almost 4,000 miles in Colorado. We also have a very high rate of broken windshields, due to all of the rocks being thrown around.

What's your experience with paint damage on an open wheeled car?

https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/show...69-In-the-Rain

Out of all of the cars I've owned, each and every Cobra replica (17 of them have been FFR's, also add the original prototype Spyder from FFR to that list) has accumulated paint chips, it's unavoidable, regardless of paint, unless you add some type of plastic or polymer "clear bra" to them. Of course when you do, that "bra" will accumulate the nicks and dents in it's material over time as well. Again, it's inevitable.

Rock chips ? Those are beauty marks 2 me.

if it aint chipped it was shipped .

I have a high boy, and have had to deal with a few rock chips over the years. I use the match stick trick on some chips and I also own an airbrush that I use for others. For a really bad one, I have had to go to my body man, who painted the car, and let him take care of it. I keep an extra pint of paint on hand just in case. Fortunately, I have not had a chip in the candy ghost flames. That would present a serious problem as those could not be repaired.