[antonio]

I was washing my IS today for the first time and spotted three oddly shaped nicks spread out in the size of a nickel on my rear bumper. The paint had chipped and is noticable. Needless to say, I was totally pissed! I only had the car for less than 2 weeks, and already I am dealing with battle scars. I doubt it was another car backing into me, judging from the really weird looking blemish. Is it possible that I ran over a some debris on the freeway and caused it to backfire and nail my car in the ass before leaving it behind? Anywayz...I'd like to ask you IS brothers and sisters if you think it would be worth it to have the whole rear bumper repainted for such little damage, or would I be better off just trying to touch it up. If so, could anyone recommend any good touch-up kits or paints available for my color. I've got the Millennium Silver Metallic. If anyone from the S.F. Bay Area knows of any good body shops around here, please let me know. I don't mean to be so anal about this, but I cringe at the thought of that mystery scratch just postin on my bumper. Any suggestions would be helpful, as well as any first-time IS injuries you could share.

 

[mkaufman]

Condolences. My first dent/chip was caused by a four inch BOLT flipped into the leading edge of my hood! Left very clear deep dented impressions of the hex head and four turns worth of the screw portion. Seven days after delivery.

As for the rear bumper, you'd like to think it's not just a couple of pieces of paint actually *flaking* away, so it has to have been some debris. From my perspective, two things argue against re-painting right now:

1) The wound is fresh. It feels awful to see the first paint damage on a brand new car. Try to accept that there will be more as time goes on. Re-painting is costly, too costly to think of doing it every time you get a chip!

2) The paint on this car really does seem to be softer than that on prior Lexi, and cars in general. Anecdotally, this is due to stricter air quality/environmental controls on the paint companies. I've had my SBM for three months, driving almost exclusively Southern California freeway miles, and the whole front end is getting chewed! I tried to start another paint topic earlier this week and no one was interested, but we all need to get complaints about our paint into our Service files. The time will come when Lexus will have to address this issue.

So just get some complimentary touch up paint from the dealer, do your best to fix the chips, and try to put it out of your mind. Do like I do, and repeat the following whenever possible: "It's just a car. It's just a car. It's just a car..."

 

[SophieSleeps]

I was reading something from another site. There was a certain procedure for fixing paint chips.

1. Clean the area
2. Mask off the area (regarless of how small)
3. Apply a small amount of the touch up paint with a toothpick or Q-tip or something
4. Let dry 15 or 20 min.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4.
6. Then apply the touch up paint so it globs up a bit over the normal smooth finish of the car...small bit.
7. Take a polish and polish the paint down. The touch up paint should work it's way down to smooth the surface completely.
8. Wax if you wax, more polish if you polish.

I HAVE NOT TRIED THIS YET. WILL BE GETTING TOUCH UP PAINT AT THE DEALER TODAY.

 

[antonio]

mkaufman....you have a very good point there!
There is no way on earth anyone could avoid getting at least on nick or dent on their car, no matter how careful they are. Unless you wanna keep it in the garage and stare at it 24/7! I'm just happy that it's still running and performing fine (Knock on wood!)I guess I just feel like I have this problem with my belongings breaking or getting damaged shortly after purchasing them. I think I'll take both yours and SophieSleeps advice and just retouch it, and save my money for future mods. I'll be taking my car to the dealer by the end of next week for my 1k service, so hopefully they'll have some touch-up paint available. Thanks y'all!