How Should I Deal With These Dings On My New '06 Is250?

[David H.]

I recently bought an '06 is250, Onyx Black and it has some dings. The two main area's I'm concerned about are the hood and the back door on the passenger side. On the hood, there are small chips in the paint from pebbles or road debris. They're kind of little places where the paint has bubbled or raised up and cracked in one area of the bubble. The raised areas are no bigger in diameter than a pencils eraser tip. My questions and concerns for this are

1. Rust is a major concern, correct? I don't see any at the moment.

2. I bought a touch up paint pen from paintscratch.com. I got the one for paint and the one for clear coat. Will these take care of the issue or is there anything else I need to get to treat these areas?

3. Is it best to just fill in the parts that have cracked with the paint or am I supposed to take off the whole "bubble" or raised area first, then paint the hood underneath?

On the back passenger side door, there are a couple areas where it looks like there was a ding that left a white mark on the paint and someone tried to rub it off with something that scratched up the clear coat. The paint itself seems to be fine from what I can tell, but at the same time, I'm a TOTAL novice when it comes to paint/detail, so I could be wrong about that. Basically, these two areas just look dull at all times, because the clear coat is so scuffed up. Here are a couple pics.

What do I need to fix this? Would polish or compound and a wax afterwards take care of this or is there another process that would be better?

Oh, and please excuse how dirty my car is. It has been raining some dirty, salty rain here lately in TN.

[cduluk]

For the chips on the hood, you're probably best to remove the whole "bubble" as you call it, prep the area with rubbing alcohol (on a cotton cloth) then apply the paint in thin layers. I wouldn't worry about rust, just make sure the area's clean before applying the paint.

As for the door ding, is the "white" the primer or maybe paint left by another car? Can you feel the white area with your fingernail? Is it deep?

If it's just paint transfer from another cars door, you could try a compound to remove it. If it's just a chip showing your cars white primer, then there isn't much you can do besides applying some touch up.

But if it's just paint transfer (white paint over yours), do NOT apply touchup...

Dings suck, i had one on my last car and i looked at it everyday :( Now i try to park far from ANYONE so i don't get kids bumping their doors into mine <_< Parallel parking works well too...

[David H.]

For the chips on the hood, you're probably best to remove the whole "bubble" as you call it, prep the area with rubbing alcohol (on a cotton cloth) then apply the paint in thin layers. I wouldn't worry about rust, just make sure the area's clean before applying the paint.

As for the door ding, is the "white" the primer or maybe paint left by another car? Can you feel the white area with your fingernail? Is it deep?

If it's just paint transfer from another cars door, you could try a compound to remove it. If it's just a chip showing your cars white primer, then there isn't much you can do besides applying some touch up.

But if it's just paint transfer (white paint over yours), do NOT apply touchup...

Dings suck, i had one on my last car and i looked at it everyday :( Now i try to park far from ANYONE so i don't get kids bumping their doors into mine <_< Parallel parking works well too...

It looks to me like it was just paint transfer. It definitely doesn't look like any paint chipped off. Also, on the hood, if I apply that touch up paint, can I polish and wax it like the rest of the paint?

[cduluk]

Awesome, so then for the ding i would use a cotton cloth with some 3M scratch remover and rub the area until the paint goes away, it'll also get rid of the scuffed area.

For the chip, i would apply a thin layer of touch-up once daily until the paint is a little higher than the surrounding paint. Let it cure for about a week, then wetsand and polish. Just gotta make sure you don't wetsand the surrounding areas too much or you'll burn through the clear...

[SW03ES]

Is there a physical dent? Thats usually what people talk about when they talk about a "ding"