Rock Chip Repair

Rock chip repair is something that most people ignore even after they notice the damage on their car. Everyone knows that rock chipped paint can cause rust, which could ruin the paint job. It’s incredible to see hundreds of cars every year, and 95% of them have untreated rust or unpainted rock chips.

Car dealerships repair services probably touched up another 3% of those cars before they flipped the unit. We applaud for the 2% that see the reality. Rust can decrease your investment’s value by a lot of money. Spending just $10 on touch up paint can prevent it.

What is rust

Rust is a reaction between iron and oxygen, and it will eat away your original paint. That reaction will only happen if water is present. If you prevent water from reaching the metal, then the chemical reaction will stop, and the rust will stop. Learn more about how to remove rust from metal in our blog article.

How to fix rock chips with rust

When you discover a rusty rock chip in the car paint then it’s time to get serious. You do not want to guess at how to stop rust. The first repair needs to be the best repair because further attempts will make the area larger each time. We use a Dremel rotary tool because for us, it has replaced even the best car paint chip repair kit when it comes tiny tools for rust removal.

If you can’t remove all the rust from the car metal, it’s okay. Just use a heat gun to ensure that any water has dried up and remove what you can before sealing it up with touchup paint.

How to do paint chip repair

This paint pen tool is perfect for fixing chipped paint and can be used for almost all repairs. Simply drop 2 drops of any color match touch up paint into the tiny bucket and let gravity do the rest. You can touch up over 100 rock chips cause by road debris in a matter of minutes. It’s also a superior tool for keeping the touchup paint away from surrounding paint and inside of tiny areas like a rock chip.

This tool is not good for fixing road rash. Instead, use a paintbrush named a sword-brush to apply the paint to road rash. If you have spray paint can, then spray the paint into a container to make a puddle of paint. Then place a few drops of paint inside of the paint pen tool.

Use good quality paint from an auto paint shop when fixing your car. Good paint lasts, and everyone wants their car repairs to be long-lasting. There is more to learn from our ridiculously long list of everything car detailing.

Wet sanding touchup paint after rock chip repair

We do not recommend wet sanding touchup paint unless you are prepared for unpredictable results. Whatever is in your mind is not reality & whatever is in the persons mind is usually not possible to achieve. To learn wet sanding touchup paint, practice on a scrap black car fender until you achieve your goals.

In our shop we do not offer a touch up paint service because we can’t reliably meet the people’s expectations. For example, some colors change when wet sanded. Therefore, we avoid wet sanding those colors. Those repairs do not look smooth, even though they are water-resistant.

Most people who ignored the rusty rock chips still expect the final outcome to be unrealistic. It is strange to consider this especially when they’re only paying a few dollars for the service. So, we just do it for free with any car detailing service or teach the customer how to do it themselves.