Most Stone Chips in the Least amount of Time

[dmacg69]

Picked the car up from dealers yesterday and went a run up to Pitlochry. Got out of the car to admire it in the sun and discovered I had 6 stone chips on bonnet.I was consciouslly leaving plenty of room between me and vehicles in front ...was totally p***ed off so headed home and washed the car and found another 3 so have a total of 9 stone chips after 114 miles and owning the car for approximately 2.5 hours........ scunnered, has really taken the shine off the experience of getting my new car.

Going to take car into dealer and get them to check the paint thickness, I knew the paint was meant to be soft but.........c'mon.

Do you think I win the award for "Most Stone Chips in the Least amount of time"

Davie

[grasey]

Sorry to hear all that, there is plenty of info on thin pain here, hope you can sort it out.

[tamis]

same problem... the car is totally ruined in the front... how many? one of the recent days i washed the car... i just stopped counting at 35 hits... and I don't mean just scratches... the whole paint got of so that I can see the white side underneath the car.... it is going to be repainted... scratches are so easy to be made on this car... who is going to be the one who pays the respraying? me me me and me....

[Honcho]

I saw somewhere that Nissan, MB and Audi are working on a special 'hardcoat' finish to try to deal with the soft paint problem. I believe BMW already use one.

Let's hope that Honda aren't so contemptuous of their customers as not to be doing the same.

[pcr]

Where I live, resurfacing the road is quick and cheap, involving 2mm of bitumen, 10mm of chippings, and a quick light rolling. It then takes about a month for the loose chippings to clear. I put most of my stone chips down to this, plus the size of the trucks these days, which can't avoid tearing up the verges of narrow roads.
I guess we're stuck with it, but if there were no stones on the road, no stone chips.

[Stephen B]

done nearly 15k in mine since last May, counted one chip when it went in 2 months ago for its service

looks like the metallics are a bit more resistant, I think I would be pushing for some serious compensation

[lazytrev]

If it means anything to you, ive not had mine 2 months yet and my CTR 2600 miles later is full of scratches and stone chips, honda paintwork is an absolute joke!

[Honda100]

25000 miles in my first Civic and only 2 stone chips in the whole time, which I don't think is bad. I am quite happy with the quality of the paint.
Surely no paint is going to give complete protection from stones that are flying off the road from passing motorists or cars that you are following?

[dmacg69]

Originally Posted by Honda100

Surely no paint is going to give complete protection from stones that are flying off the road from passing motorists or cars that you are following?

Honda100,
I never expected to have paint that gave total protection and expected to get stone chips at some point,and I was very conscious of not travelling too close to vehicles in front (although this doesn't account for passing vehicles) and cannot even recollect hearing anything of any significance hitting the car... but to get 9 in such a short space of time either means I have extremely bad luck or that there may be an underlying paint issue with my car...perhaps poor adhesion to the the primer layer? A number of the chips were more like the paint had sort of "flaked off" with the primer visible and unmarked and about 3mm x 2mm in size with no dent to the panel.

Also I was being even more careful on the way home after finding the first 6 and managed to pick up a further 3.

[NEEMSTAR]

feel for you mate
hope it gets sorted soon , honda should definitely take note of the paint problem and sort it out !

[Kremmen]

Some have loads, some only have a few.

Yes, it's down to shoddy road repairs but it all depends on your journeys.

If you only travel on slow urban roads then the likelihood of chips is quite low. If like me you are mainly travelling > 50mph on motorways and fast dual carriageways then it is inevitable.

I've probably got a couple of dozen tiny nicks but this time round I chose a colour that closely matches the undercoat colour so it doesn't show as much.

My last dark blue car with light grey undercoat wasn't ideal.

I think you need to chose either grey/silver or red otherwise they're gonna show

[montymole1]

I have to say also cleaned my car yesterday and done 7k miles....and i have got a lease 9 stone chips....i never has paint so thin.....there isnt even on primer underneath !!!

honda have to do something....I know i have moved from a gold mkv....but this is a joke.....

I think we should all start somthing on here to present to honda uk.... I have NHB ....and it does take the shine of owning a nice car !

[dmacg69]

Took car into dealer today and got the bodyshop manager out to have a look at the car.

He took quite a few measurements of the paint thickness all over the car and it averaged about 120 microns which he said was what he would have expected and that this was within the spec for paint thickness. he even checked some other cars in the car park, not only Hondas and the readings were mostly between 110 - 130 microns.
He said he would contact Honda about it, he did agree that he thought it was an excessive amount of chips to have in little over 100 miles but seemed not to want to commit himself to saying that he thought I had an adhesion problem ..... I feel personally that if there was no problem then he would have no reason to contact Honda, said he would contact me to let me know what was going on.

Suppose I just have to wait on Honda's response, hopefully it's in my favour.......

Thanks for all the messages of support

Davie

[leeroy1986]

I've done almost 5k in my NHB and have 3 chips however on all of them you could see through to the metal!!!! its a joke, ive had a mini and an audi before and never had this issue, in the mini i had a stone bounce off the bonnet and crack the windscreen, no mark on the bonnet tho! I complained to my dealer and they filled in the chips, i have since bought the touch up pen which does help but when i polish it you can still see the marks.

[Kremmen]

Originally Posted by dmacg69

Took car into dealer today and got the bodyshop manager out to have a look at the car.

He took quite a few measurements of the paint thickness all over the car and it averaged about 120 microns which he said was what he would have expected and that this was within the spec for paint thickness. he even checked some other cars in the car park, not only Hondas and the readings were mostly between 110 - 130 microns.
He said he would contact Honda about it, he did agree that he thought it was an excessive amount of chips to have in little over 100 miles but seemed not to want to commit himself to saying that he thought I had an adhesion problem ..... I feel personally that if there was no problem then he would have no reason to contact Honda, said he would contact me to let me know what was going on.

Suppose I just have to wait on Honda's response, hopefully it's in my favour.......

Thanks for all the messages of support

Davie

Thew thing is, whether you have done 100 or 10,000 miles, if your local roads are full of loose chippings and you encounter vehicles, especially lorries, coming the other way chucking up stones, you are going to suffer the chips.

It is a pain and I don't think extra thickness of paint will solve it. We need to get someone to give the front end a quick respray with a solvent based paint when the EU aren't looking.

There was a post recently that indicated that beemers now have a powder coat solution that appears to be more resilient.

So far, compared to my IS200, the paint is holding up better. I've got a couple of dozen tiny, almost invisible nicks on the bumper and 2 or 3 on the bonnet & front wings but I keep the touch up on hand.

Dark colours are going to look worst because they tend to use light grey as the base primer.

Wouldn't you have thought they could develop an undercoat colour that matches the topcoat by now ?

[Jack The Lad.]

But then we wouldn't notice the chips mate and the weather would get under the clear coat and start blowing it off, till the damage was 3 - 4 times larger.
Then Honda would loose millions by not flogging any touch up paint, which is probably made in China anyway. This would have a knock on effect on the Chinese economy, which would then lead to a world wide recession and we would all have to sell our Civics, complete with the said stone chips. To whom, - don't know. Maybe to folk in Chippingham. As you may have noticed, I'm not into doing any building plans today.

[flyguy40@]

Hi just joined this site,i own a black 07 crv,its chipped all over the front,spoke to the dealer and they say the black is the worst followed by the red!!!My only god-send is that i have traded it,pick my type r up on monday,in SILVER!!!!

[dragonglance]

Well i am feeling pretty rubbish i have ahd my Type s Gt for a grand total of 4 days now and was cleaning it today making it look all lovely grabbed my phone after i had finished driving it from inside the car and as i opened the door a gust of wind caught it and banged it into a cement post in my drive not bad bad damaged but i know it is there if you knwo what i mean and there is the smallest of dents aswell GRRRRR

[paulpj]

Just had my CTR GT NHB back from the dealership after just over 600 miles it had 7 chips on the bonnet,Honda agreed there was a paint problem they took the bonnet off stripped the paint back to the metal and resprayed it . Lets hope that solves the problem, I'll let you know in 600 miles time.

CTR GT NHB

[dmacg69]

paulpj....... I've sent you a PM.