So we had our first snow last week in NW IN. On my way to work the wonderful city of Chicago salt trucks were out. On my way down Lake Shore Drive, three of them get onto the road ahead of me and start dumping rock salt in the three right lanes. The guy in front of me apparently thought it was great fun to drive and get pelted by hundreds of rocks as he drove, since he took his sweet time deciding to get past them.

This weekend I wash the car to get all of that salt off of it. Then Tuesday I finally get a good look at it in some light and what do I find? I find a LOT of little nicks in my paint. The hood above my clear bra has a bunch, and today I was getting gas and I find some on the passenger side of the car too! I swear if you look at this paint funny it gets nicked.

Sorry. I just had to vent.

 

My not be the paints fault...

Small rocks or salt rocks will chip any cars paint.

Also, leaving salt on your car for days and be a good thing either...

 

KLB - I feel your pain. Major problem around here. Only two routes out of our small town are major highways. I-80 is clogged with trucks and when they put sand down on the road surface, it is very hard on the paint as the semis throw it up nearly as bad as the sanding trucks. Not much you can do when there are thousands of trucks per day that go by. The damage to the paint on my last car was bad and I expect the same on the new Infiniti. I'm no paint expert but someone told me that manufacturers use paint that is not as hard or durable as in days gone past. I'm not sure if that is the case, but it sure seems worse than it used to.

 

I hear you guys, I didn't have my car a week and found 2 nicks in the front bumber cover and one on the rear. I thought it was a bad paint job and took it back to the dealer. They said that the front was just normal do to the debris on the highways here in San Antonio and the fact that the car rides so low. They couldn't figure out why the back was chipped out so they agreed to repair that one.

 

Just be like me and never wash your car. I have a nice really thick layer of dirt built up around my car that acts like a protection blanket.

 

Maybe that's what I will do.
Just a warning for all of you though. If you come through Wyoming on I-80 during or after a snow storm, your car will get paint chips and you might even wind up with a cracked windshield!

 

I had a cheap Dodge Caliber that I drive the same route for 2 winters, and it has nothing like this. I have been truly amazed at how easily this car's paint gets nicks and chips.

 

Like this?



After I ran it through a touchless carwash with a powerful underbody spray, she looked great again. The only thing that isn't so great is the suspension. Something about driving on roads that in places had 5 inch deep holes in the snow (because the city was too cheap to plow and salt again after an 18" blizzard).

 

Guys the problem is the Environmental Protection Agency. They have passed laws over the last decade that has led to what we have today. Water based paint. Its very soft and chips very easily. This is across the board though will all vehicle manufactureres... and even motorcycles. Get used to it. The laws wont change anytime soon... especially with these wack jobs running the country today.

 

Not to put too fine a point on it but I believe our G's are assembled and painted in Japan and the allowable products used are regulated by the Japan Ministry of Environment. Primary among the regulations is the Japan Air Pollution Control Law (mainly) due to the VOC's given off in the painting process. Evidently the wack (sic) jobs over there have the same scientific process as we do over here. Our scientists have pretty heavily regulated VOCs for over here since at least 1998 based on evidence that they are a major hazard to humans in the work place and cause environmental degradation when released into the atmosphere. Regulations in Japan and the U.S. get more stringent as scientists discover additional hazards produced by the pollutants. One of the side effects of this process has been automotive paint that is not as durable as in the past. What I wonder is why some smart inventor has not come up with a new method of protecting sheet metal that is very durable and is not environmentally harmful even if it radically departs from the traditional methods.