So, my beloved Laguna Blue Pearl AP2 Honda S2000 has suffered from a plethora of paint chips for years- with most of them being on the OEM aluminum hood. Surprisingly, there are almost no chips at all on the (urethane) front bumper. There are also a few on the (not sure if they're aluminum or steel?) front left fender, but most of them are on the hood. I didn't count them, but there were likely ~50 paint chips on the hood.
I actually have a bottle of OEM Honda touch up paint- I've used it in the past, but it's resulted in splotches of slightly darker paint that almost look worse than the paint chips themselves. So, I've only used it sparingly.
I'm pretty confident that ~95% of these paint chips are the result of driving back and forth to autoX events (mostly on I-25, which was under construction for years).
I finally got tired of looking at them and decided to scour the Internet in search of a solution; to which the fine folks on Reddit led me to Dr. ColorChip.
I can't hardly believe how easy it was to use and how much of a positive difference it made! I truly regret not taking a before photo to demonstrate the difference. My wife acted as my assistant today and we were both shocked at the transformation- you would never believe this hood had ~50 paint chips in it, just an hour or so prior:
At first, I was nervous, as the color looked so much darker than my OEM paint... but my fears were unfounded. The process was super simple:
1. Clean the area you want to paint.
2. Dabble just a bit of paint onto/next to the chip (they give you a few brushes).
3. Use the soft rubber squeegee (they give you 2 different sizes of them) or your thumb to drag the paint across the hole, flattening the paint in the process - this will smear it all over making it look terrible, but don't worry, there's method to the madness.
4. Wait for the paint to dry (3-5 minutes).
5. Use their SealAct solution- this will clean up all the splotches. They recommend you use their supplied absorbant cloth and the palm of your hand, rubbing it softly until the excess paint comes off. In the end, this just leaves paint inside the rock chip hole- all paint surrounding it goes away, leaving it looking clean as can be.
6. Use a microfiber cloth (supplied) to buff the areas treated until they shine (very easy).
There's more in the kit that's not pictured (used clothes and nitrile gloves), but I ordered the Squirt 'n Squeegee Plus Kit:
After filling ~50 holes, I would say I used roughly ~20% of the SealAct, so I still have a ton left if needed in the future.
I'm mostly sharing this for people that have never heard of Dr. ColorChip. I'm not affiliated with Dr. ColorChip in any way, shape or form. I didn't receive any discount or payment from them, I paid full price and would gladly pay it again. With shipping I think the whole kit cost me $75 or so.
If you have a bunch of rock chips that are driving you crazy and don't want to pay for a respray, this whole process was relatively inexpensive, simplistic and highly effective. Yes, if you look very closely, you can still see evidence that the rock chips existed (they're ever so slightly darker than the rest of the paint, but this might change when cured), but from 3-5 feet away, the car no longer looks like I was following a leaking sand/gravel truck across the country. Now the only noticeable spots on the car are on the left fender where I previously used OEM Honda touch up paint- after using Dr. ColorChip, I'll likely never bother with OEM touch up paint again.
Just figured I would share my experience.
