way exceeding my expectations here.

that would be kind of fun. convincing kobi to go along with it would be a challenge, though.

are there any downsides to wrapping (other than the personal preference of the looks)? Does it damage the paint in any way or leave a residue behind? OTOH does it provide any protection against paint chips?

There is a risk when you remove wrap that it will pull up badly adhered paint, especially if the removal is done wrong. This risk is no different than a clear bra. Likewise, a wrap is basically a colored car bra. Although I think that they are frequently a little bit thinner to make installation easier.

Wrapping a car is certainly protective. Unfortunately, if the car's paint is already not in great shape, you'll have to do something about rock chips, etc. BEFORE you wrap it. I'm not expert enough to know where the line is between rock chips that will get covered and chips that will show through, but it's definitely an issue to be aware of.

Edit: And you can see in the pictures that one of my next projects is to remove the old fender stone guards. Which will take patience.

That's sort of the thing. As well as you've been able to work the paint on that car, there's only so far you can bring it...and it will only last up to a point. A wrap just lets you do something fun until then.

To expand a bit on Nick's comments about wraps... Removal can be super bitch. The better and better prepared the finish before the wrap went on, the easier and less likely to damage removal will go.

On this car, I would expect damage...but if the wrap was in place for three years, I would expect the damage magnitude to be comparable to three more years of weathering (but also dependent on use and garaging situation).

Even without damage, it's not like you pull it off and everything's great. You'll have to remove adhesive in places, clay, thoroughly clean and then do a regular wash and application of whatever gloss enhancers and protective coating you're going to use. Basically, all in line with a full on detail.

As Nick said, wraps are generally thinner and don't offer as much protection as higher quality clear bra products, but they do offer some. There are a couple different high quality brands and they all have several lines. They're not all created equally and there are some compromises and trade offs to be made.

Can you walk through with detail your DR Colorchip process. I've used it before with decent success on cars I didn't really care about, but yesterday on the way home from work in the e wagon, a dump truck didn't have his gate closed and dumped a shitload of gravel on the road in front of me. I now have about 20 - 40 small chips on the hood of the Lunar Blue wagon. I think DR Colorchip is my best option to clean it up vs going full respray through insurance (I'm interested to hear your thoughts on that too). No dents or hail like issues thank goodness.

Needless to say it is pretty frustrating.

I mean, the Turbo would be an us-paying full respray. It really still could use one, but we don't really want to spend the $10-20k.

There's not a lot to my halfassed process. I just dab it in, let it dry for a bit, and then polish off the excess while it's still soft. It seems to work meaningfully better than using their clean up fluid and it's way easier.

Is the Clearcut the way to go or is it too aggressive, and what pad do you use?

IIRC (it's been a while), I eventually found that a milder pad worked fine.

This thread bump is timely.

The paint on the RX-8 is pretty awful. The car had 151,000 miles on it when I bought it and the paint was original except for the right rear corner which looks to have some light body work and a (decently blended) respray. Before KOTM I went over the car with touch-up paint and Langka leveling compound and was reminded how painful of a process that is. The entire car had bad swirling, so I ended up using Meguiar's 105 compound followed by 210, because it's what I had. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out but it didn't level the chips as much as I would have liked. I need to try some of this ClearCut stuff.

Pic from Motor Trend... not the greatest resolution, but not horrible

https://mtg-assets-prod.s3.amazonaws...tain-3-iii.jpg