penguinking

drove my car from georgia to texas and hten back to georgia - i washed the car at each stop for gas, etc. but bugs and rocks still manage to get stuck to my car and now the whole front bumper is dotted with tiny little rock chips and such from the long drive. didnt get a stoneguard or clearliner for it so its been beat up pretty badly - will touchup paint fix this (its ALOT of rock chips btw) or should i just go ahead and get the bumper repainted...cost on that one?

deputydog95

same thing just happened to me. drove from ohio to FL and my car got F'd up. bummed me out. oh well, it's a car and if you're gonna drive it stuff like this is going to happen. i just plan on repainting the front end, mirrors, and side skirts every couple years. it's around $600 to have that clear bra installed. i can get a whole lot of paint work done for that.

penguinking

600 for a clearbra? dang, might as well be getting the car repainted every 6months or so...


sidequestion - how much success have you had with touchup paint? i have a few other scrapes and scratches here and there that could use a little help but im not about to have the entire sidepanel repainted just for a tiny nick.

BSC

I was chatting with my dealer once about the topic and he said they do full repaints OR airbrushing for minor flaws. Before you spring for a good paint job, you may want to investigate whether the airbrush technique will accomplish what you want for a lot less $ (200 I think). My guy said they usually hit it with the first coat, people come back saying it looks cloudy, buff it, paint again and it looks great (no charge for the second buffing and repaint).

deputydog95

hadn't heard of the airbrush thing. sounds like a good option. the clear bra is really expesive if you do the bumper, hood, fenders, and mirrors. if you go to thier website, i think it's xpel or something like that, they have all the prices there. it's around $250 for the parts and another $250 to have it put on.

earlyapex

Touch paint will only cover up the missing paint but not make the depression smooth out. You end up with a bumper that looks like it had a bad case of acne. My wife's A6 ended up like this after one winter in Colorado. We're going to have to get it sanded and painted.

I have the full X-pel kit on my car I am very happy with it. It the installers about 6 hours to put the whole kit on. I couldn't have done it myself. I personnally don't like the look of regular masks/bras and you have to keep these on all the time. The installation was expensive. I live in an aggricultural area so there's allot of bugs and road debris. It's saved my car from damage on numerous occasions. It's probably cheaper than getting my bumper sanded and repainted in the future.

mortonmj

There's been some good previous discussions about the 3M film and the various kits. I just had StonGard installed on my car. Although it is costly, you have to weigh that against how many times you plan to get your bumper repainted and the time you are without your car. So it's a personal choice. Search on Stongard or x-pel for some very good previous opinions on these templates.

BostonMarkC

Clearbra costs 600 bucks. Replacing factory paint depreciates the car by thousands of dollars. Furthermore, a Porsche-spec paint job on the hood, bumpers, and fenders would be $2-3K.

I'd get the Clearbra.

20C4S

couldn't agree more. any repaint is not OEM paint!

penguinking

so basically i should go ahead and get that GT3 bumper i wanted? :-P

oalvarez

you guys are the pros, BUT i beg to differ on this topic!!! replacing factory paint on the bumper/hood DOES NOT depreciate the car by thousands of dollars. better yet, if you were shown a car with a repainted bumper/hood but not rest of car, you could 1) hardly tell the difference 2) almost be glad that they got it done.....come on, most cars have rock chips on the nose/hood, it's perfectly normal. the only normal way to get it back to original appearance is to paint the affected surface. remember, if you get in a wreck, the affected area has to be re-painted, it doesn't prove disastrous to the value of the car.

ignacio

i try not to sweat rock chips on the bumper--after all it's plastic! touch up paint works fine for me--the clear bras remind me of plastic slip covers on old people's sofas. i always wonder what the resulant surface looks like after years of being scotch taped. c'mon guys we own CARS not rembrants. stone chips are a part of life that i do not think significantly affects the value of our investment. the real shame is to let anything get in the way of DRIVING our cars as much as possible. life is just to damn short!

penguinking

oh believe me i will continue to drive my car the way it should be enjoyed, but its hard to appreciate a good carwax n polish when your entire frontside is scratched down to the paint.

Orient Express

If you are going to drive your car on long distance trips, stone guard will end up looking as ratty as if you did nothing. The best way to protect the front end of these cars is to put a real bra on them. I have almost 30K on my car, which included several 2 week trips through out the south west. But because I have a good bra on the car (from speed lingerie) the front of the car still looks like it just rolled off of the assembly line. In fact despite the many highway miles, this car still has won top honors in PCA for full concours 2 years in a row.

Bottom line, clear bras seem like a good idea (and are for the headlights), but the rest of the application on the body will look like S*it in a few months. A bra costs just as much, takes a little more work, but is a much better solution.