Well, less than 2 months after replacing my old, clear film with Xpel (due to a small front bumper repair), I encountered a rock on the freeway. 2 small tears in the film and, possibly, a slight dent or two in the hood itself. Hard to tell.

Assuming there is no damage to the actual hood, I will need to remove the old film and have it reapplied ($1200), or remove it and just go naked, since it didn't work anyway. At this rate, I could do a hood respray every year or two and come out ahead. Any thoughts?

(Note...in the pic it's the two small dots lower right. The streaky white lines are reflections)

 

Wow. No warranty with it against this type of thing? I would call the installation place and see what they can offer.

I was debating doing XPEL or just repainting, this may have me just go with the repainting route.

 

I don't think it was designed for this kind of protection. I heard that rock hit and almost ducked for cover. If there is no damage under the film, I'd say it did its job. I think there probably is, but it could have been worse.

 

Once the rocks get to a certain size nothing will stop 'em.

I found a rock chip on my daily that actually made a small crater in the metal on the nose of the car. I never heard it hit.

 

Agree, with the hi cost most of these guys charge for clear bra, you could paint the car. This material only costs $50 to $100 , they like to get rich every time they have a good car come in. But also if you didnt have it, it would have been a paint chip. I would touch that tear with some black paint and let it go.

 

I had XPel put on my front bumper, lights, lid, front fenders, and the backs of the mirrors. Later, someone very dear to me lifted the lid while the wipers were up while washing the car and tore up the XPel on the back edge of the lid. I was positive I . . . I mean, that special someone . . . had destroyed the paint on along the back of the lid. That's what it looked like, at any rate.

When we took my wife's brand new Macan in for a front wrap, I asked my detailer about the damage. He looked at it, studied it up close, then announced, "I don't think there is any paint damage there!" He offered to strip and rewrap it for a reasonable price -- much lower than the original total front end wrap -- which was still his standard rate, just fewer square feet. I took him up on his proposal.

After he had removed the original XPel, it turns out he was completely right. There was absolutely no damage to the back edge of the front lid! I was, and remain astonished given how bad the original XPel had looked.

I guess my points are these: (1) When XPel takes the bullet for your paint, it can look really, really bad and still protect the paint completely. (2) You don't have to rewrap every single part when you get such damage, just the damaged part. Then the Xpel "repair" can be quite reasonable compared to a repaint.