jim628

I spent extra time washing my car over the weekend and I noticed there are several chips on the paint: by the hood, by the gas tank door, on the roof etc. I am wondering if it happens to other members also. Seems like the paint chips easily. I thought MB paint is one of the best. The car is always garaged and used mainly on weekend.

Thx.

Buellwinkle

Yes, it's terrible. If it bothers you, on your next car, get the invisible shield that they glue to your hood/bumper/mirrors and stuff. I have it on my truck and it works great. Paid $130 on my truck but the W203 is much more complex so expect to pay 3-4 times that but still worth it. Wish I did it on the coupe but it's too late now.

Harris

Horrifying! I just repainted my whole bumper and put on some Xpel.

dswildfire

no paint chips here, except for that one spot where the dealer hit the door.

truelove

yup, MB paint chips and scratches very easily. brush by your car with your shirt or coat sometime and then take a look at that spot in the sun sometime to see the nice fine scratches left behind.

this past winter during a very windy day, the wind blew a bunch of dirt/tiny rocks (like sand) and other crap at my car while i was driving around. it all happened in about 2 seconds but it left little marks all over the front of my car and hood. you'd never notice it unless i pointed it out. oh well.

brn_red

I do have some paint chips on my hood, but since I put about 100 miles daily commuting from home to school, and I drive mostly on highways, what is on the hood is not bad compared to the distances that I drive to. But still, I really feel bad when I see them.

Does anyone know how much would it cost to do touch ups for the hood, I have about 5 to 10 paint chips?

Buellwinkle

Most body shops would just charge you to repaint the hood/bumper/fenders, expect to pay about $2,000. If you are a do it yourself type with lots of free time. Use a toothpick to fill the chip with touchup paint from the dealer and build it up so it's higher than the surrounding surface. Wait about a day. Then you have 2 choices -
1. Use a langka, a chemical that flattens the new paint and makes it level with the surrounding paint
2. Get 500/1000/1500/2000 wet sandpaper (Pep Boys carries it). Cut the sandpaper into small strips, wet the paper for at least 10 minutes and wrap it around a small block and sand starting at 500 until the area is flat. Go back and forth in one direction, then with the next grit, sand perpendicular until the previous grits lines dissapear and so on until you've gone through the 4 levels of grit. Always keep the sanding area wet, very wet. Then buff out the area with buffing compound, polish it with swirl remover and wax.

taylor192

Don't bother trying to do touch-up paint with metallic silver. The paint from the dealer is crap, it doesn't match.

My hood looks the moon right now with so many craters. I wish I had put Xpel on it. The rock chips are so bad that my driver's mirror marker lense is cracked, and my passenger impact strip has crunks of plastic missing, not just paint!! WTF!

Buellwinkle

That's true of any metalic paint. Metalic paint has fine particles of metal flakes that lay differently when sprayed vs. brushed on. The paint will look like a different color because of the way the light reflects off the metal particles and since it's different than the sprayed on paint it may appear to look darker. All you can do is the best that you can with the resources you have. The best way if money is not object is to get the whole front repainted and then add the invisible plastic shield to prevent further damage. I went for the easiest way, ignore it.

jrct9454

Well, it's not unique to metallics, not unique to Mercedes, not unique, period...

When ALL of the car makers went to water-based paints in the past few years [for environmental reasons, to cut emissions from the factory paint shops], this has been a consequence. The same complaints are to be found on all of the Edmunds boards [BMW, MB, Toyota, Nissan, VW, etc.]; in each case each group is convinced they are somehow unique....and that's simply not the case.

As for scratches [as opposed to chipping], MB has recently made a breakthrough that will be showing up on all models in the next year. They discovered that they can make the clearcoat vastly more resistant to scratches by including a microscopic amount of ceramic chips in the paint. Each of the factories will get the paint shops converted to use the new clear coat within the next few months. [Another member in another thread posted a link to the article on this topic...the above paragraph is a brief summation of that, which I also have read in a number of different auto trade publications.]

Sometimes a good paint detailer [the dealers hire them all the time to spruce up used cars] can do remarkable things with chipped areas without doing a complete respray costing thousands. You might ask your dealer [or any dealer in the area - doesn't have to be MB] whom they employ for this service, and hire them to do your car.

On color matching: the touchup paints for the lighter colors CAN be made to match, but you have to be VERY patient - basically, you have to shake the bejeezus out of the tube [for several minutes], longer and harder than most people are willing to do, and then the lighter metallics can be made to match. I've had no trouble getting good matches with Astral Silver, Smoke Silver, and some of the gold tones from earlier models, even when other people have complained bitterly about how they can't get it to avoid looking darker than the original. You just have to be willing to shake it until your arm threatens to come out of the shoulder socket, and then shake it some more...

truelove

i would also recommend the touch-up paint and langka method. langka freakin rocks, i love it. it really does work too.

SUNILP

I have some on mine and I have the X-pel head light covers and the clear bra. It's really good stuff. I just ordered the door handle ones also as peoples nails dig into the paint as well when opening doors.

GDawgC220

I can speak from experience on that touch up stick. Yes, it doesn't match very well. Maybe because due to the age of my car (on the w202), but we even tried it on our S500 and same. The touch up color is darker than the body for some reason.

Acutally, today I went to home depot and bought a can of "Rustoleum Auto Paint" Brilliant Metal Finish. See, I had nicked my front right corner of the bumper, took a nice chunk of paint out and was left with the yellowness of it. Was shopping at home depot and figured what the hell, for $4, why not.

Went home, covered up the surrounding areas. Gave it a nice light coat at first, waited a few minutes then gave it a "deeper" coat...came out pretty good, better than the touch up stick stuff.

But, yea, MB's are easy to chip. My bumper is rock chip city. Our S and ML have some chips too I think the only solution is the invisible guard stuff for your bumpers, headlights and mirrors. Other than that, if a rock hits hard enough, goodbye paint.

moomeh

i have some chips, but not many (like 3 noticeable). my parents' cars are filled with chips though. they had their cars longer though. [and they tailgate more than i do].

bensitto

Getting my front end repainted when I get my rieger kit installed. Definitely going with the clear bra.

Anyone have links where we can find this stuff?

Kar don

yup thats why i got a clear bra on mine. Cant even see it unless u get close to the car, saved my front end! After almost a year not a single chip on the car! I am impressed (knock on wood)

GDawgC220

not even on the hood or doors or roof Ali? not a single one? :p