Dr. Color Chip - paint chip repair

[clyde]

Originally Posted by JST

I'll say that on the BMW, the flared rear wheel arches are covered by a small amount of PPF--and where they aren't covered, there is a fine sandblast of chips that looks like dust that never goes away. I would absolutely do more coverage on areas like that if I got a new car.

At the same time, the similar protectant film on the rear fenders of the Porsche looks like absolute crap. Not as bad as the pic I posted above, but...maybe not too far off. The saving grace for me is that my car isn't white, so it's not as noticeable. I suspect that PPF has come a long was since 2006, and I keep meaning to order new film for the Boxster, but I haven't gotten around to it.

There are varying qualities of PPF. The Camaro has similar small pieces that are of questionable value. I think they protect the paint under them, but the pieces take the hits and show it. On the gray car, the area with the factory PPF looked a little worse than the surrounding area without it.

In the pic below, the blue outline shows the factory piece which I will remove. The green outline is where I will apply Xpel Ultimate Plus. The area above is still going to pick up some chips, but without doing the entire side of the car, I have to stop somewhere, so I'm stopping with the top of the rocker panel (and live with the very small line that will exist under the door).



If I had your Boxster and wanted to replace that film, I'd do some searching to see what kind of experiences other people may have had with cars that have lived similar lives. I'd be a bit concerned that removing it would take clear coat with it, so I'd want to be prepared to "do something" if that happened. That something could be a number of different half-assed solutions short of actually repainting.