I have about 3500 miles on the car and have multiple tiny chips on the bonnet. This is just freeway and some city driving. No dirt roads. Quite disappointed with how easily the paint chips.

 

Welcome to the club, chip!
Soon you windshield will be so pitted, you'll forget about the chips in your bonnet.
Really though I don't think it is a matter of being thin. Rather I think it is a combination of being hard and the relatively vertical surfaces of the nose that results in the multiple chips.
Clear Bra or slip-on bra (Colgan) are common solutions as is Langka which you can use to fill and smooth the chips with blobs of your factory paint.

 

Anyone have a before/after of the Langka product on a mini?

 

I use it as my method to fill in chips. Don't have any pictures though.
Pretty simple and effective: Clean with paint thiner or the Langka cleaner, take a toothpick and build a blob of your touch-up paint in the chip (you want it above the surrounding level of paint and to fill the entire chip, wait for 2 hours for the blob to dry, use the Langka provided plastic scraper (about the size of a credit card) and wrap it in a piece of old t-shirt material, put some Langka blob remover on the t-shirt wrapped scraper and begin rubbing the blob of paint. Soon the blob will begin to dissolve and the scraper ensures that it is level with the surrounding paint. I usually rub it until it is slightly below paint level so I can repeat the process with clear coat.
Really the hardest part is waiting until the blob is dry. The blob remover liquid smells like crap but it will work on blobs that are up to a couple of days old.

 

Hi Maybee,
Did you use the $40 kit with the 'paint sealant', or the $20 kit with just the 'blob eliminator'?

Thanks,
Pasta

 

I think I got the $40 one, though I use my own clear coat touch-up from the dealer.

 

Question:

How many cars have you bought 'new' b4 this one?

 

I assume that question was directed at me.

How about 10 new cars....93' 400e, 02 Volvo, 04 Cayenne S, 07' MCS partial list. Your point being?

 

????

 

I would agree...the paint is HORRIBLE on the MINI. I've had Ruska for 7 months and with over 9000 miles cross country. She's never seen a gravel road but I have probably 20 paint chips on my bonnet.

I've also got paint that rubbed off in the boot.

I'm not sure if it's the type of paint used or just the angle of the bonnet, but I'm seriously regretting not investing in a 3M protectant.

 

Is not the paint on the MINI, water based? This could explain why it is not as durable as the old solvent based paint systems.

 

The colour coat is water-based, but I believe the clearcoat is still solvent-based. Regardless, the same is true for most new cars, so that by itself wouldn't explain the MINI's tendency to chip more than other cars.

Generally, the harder the clearcoat, the more prone it is to chip. Also, as others have pointed out, the angles of the MINI's front end don't help - just look at the windshield-pitting issue. I'm sure that the glass used for the MINI windshields isn't any weaker than other cars.

 

Concur....last I heard the paint companies were still really struggling to find a workable water based clear coat, despite California's requirement to use same.....

Water based color is becoming prev' and saying that the base coat is thin is redundant because thin color is the whole reason behind the base/clear system.

Scott makes a good point.... a soft clear would flex more, while a hard clear will chip.... Any clear has a recommended 'thickness' for application and it ain't much....I'm confident MINI applies clear to the manufacturer spec's (which may change as they can and do change paint suppliers I'm sure....)

I've yet to see a water based clear on the shelf where I buy my auto paints, nor on the web sites of the major manufactures....if anyone else has please point me tho as I'm willing to try them...(I don't know if you've tried a water based urethane for wood, but I've found it much more difficult to get a good finish with it .... it really likes to bubble off a brush; more than a solvent based urethane in my experience)

I do see suppliers now selling spray guns that are specifically for water based paints....what's different about them I haven't figured out but for example check Eastwood's paint gun selection and you'll see several listed as better for water based paints. If I had a gun for water, I'd understand why one for solvents would be different.....a solvent could destroy seals that r OK for water. Does that work the other way?

 

Does it make sense to put a clear bra on 5 months after purchase? At least it would prevent further chips.

 

Better late than never - my wife's MINI was about that old before we had the bra put on it. The only drawback was that I had to fix six or seven rock chips before taking it to the installer (I didn't want the existing chips immortalized forever under the bra).
We learned our lesson though, and when my MINI arrived, one of the first places it went was to the installer's shop.

 

food for thought....

The clear bra doesn't prevent the hits.... I've friends with 02's who complain that the pits in their clear bra make the car just as "violated" as if the paint was dinged....

Ya try to wax over the pitted bra and ya get????? {I did not suggest u should wax the bra ....}

and some say the bra yellows......

no opinion here ... just voicing the other side

there is no complete fix ....

 

There are paints available to the manufacturers which are almost bullet-proof. Ford/Volvo use such paints. They do cost more as they require a rather expensive configuration to apply them to the body panels. But, they require no manual labor and the paint is applied faster and dries/cures quicker. So it is a trade-off.

It is not the thickness of the paint at issue. It is the type of paint and how it is applied which dictates its durability.

Romi does not have a clear bra. I really do not care for them. Unfortunately, and fortunately, she got keyed at a parking lot one night on top of the bonnet. So it forced me to expedite what I was planning to do anyway. I shot a couple of coats of clear polyurethane on her bonnet.

Tougher than the bra, and better looking when properly applied. Costs more to apply though. Not any ole paint shop can apply it.

 

How much did that cost you? I assume it waxes up the same as before, unlike the clear bra (I never thought about that). Do chips show at all?

 

I shot it myself. I have a small paint room. I cannot do the entire car, but only sections at a time. I do not have any chips in the bonnet so I cannot comment on how they would look. Yes, you take care of it just like any paint.

If you are really interested in it, I would suggest finding a local paint shop who specializes in aircraft painting. They are typically used to dealing with the special requirements of applying polyurethanes.

 

Thanks you for the good advice .

 

my solution: lead, never follow

 

If you're interested in having polyurethane clear sprayed on your car, any body shop will be able to do it. Polyurethane is the standard automotive clearcoat, and has been for years. Even the aftermarket clearcoats (Dupont's "Imron", House of Kolor, even Sherwin-Williams) are simple polyurethane clears.

There *are* specialty clearcoats that some of the car companies use (like Mercedes' "ceramic clear", but polyurethane isn't one of them.

Also, the 3M "clear bra" is nothing more than a clear polyurethane film with an adhesive backing. The difference is, at 8 mils thick, the clear bra is about as thick as an entire normal factory paint job (primer, basecoat, and clearcoat combined).

If you've ever shot automotive clearcoat and had some leftover clear, if you pour it into an open ziploc bag or other open container and leave it to dry, you'll see that it has the same consistency as the clearbra material. It never totally hardens, even after months/years, and it has a rubbery, flexible texture.

 

Scott, no offense intended but polyurethanes are not the same as the automotive acrylic clear coats which have been used for a number of years in the automotive industry.

Clear coats are typically the same acrylic resin as the paint, but with no pigment added. The resins are a polymer, but they are not polyurethane. Ford/Volvo and a couple of other companies use a member of the polyurethane family for their paint, but most car compaines use a polymer acrylic which is similar in structure to sheet acrylic. It is very brittle and chips fairly easily, but they hold thier color and appearance for a much longer time than enamel or lacquer.

Polyurethanes absorb more energy before damage occurs. Polyurethane clear coats more closely resemble the clear wheel coatings on the aluminum wheels of the Mini. Those coatings are catalyzed urethanes, for the most part, which gives them a more rubbery feel, but it also makes them a bit more resilient.

As I have shot all manner of paint, I can categorically tell you, you cannot use the same prep techniques for polyurethanes as you do for other acrylics. If you do, there is a good chance you will make a bigger mess of things.

 

I've shot a fair variety of paint as well, and I still say that you can go to any production/repair paint shop in the country, and they will have no problems whatsoever shooting catalyzed polyurethane, since that's almost all they do now. The don't use single-stage enamel unless they're doing a spot-repair on a 20+year-old car, (or it's a $499 Maaco/Earl Scheib re-paint). And they're not using lacquer anymore, except for some of the custom shops that are starting with bare metal and need to be able to shoot multiple coats for special effects without excessive buildup.
Look at the clears that the shops shoot all day - PPG, DuPont, Sherwin-Williams Ultra 7000, and similar paints, and they're all catalyzed polyurethanes.

Sure, they're more expensive than lacquer (which you couldn't shoot over factory paint anyway), but applying a clear polyurethane shouldn't be foreign to *any* production/repair shop.

 

My whole point is not all clear paints are polyurethanes. And the clear coat on the Mini is not polyurethane. It reacts to too many exrernal factors to be polyurethane. Is it possible you are calling a paint which is a urethane, a polyurethane? They are different. Urethane is just the name adopted to better describe the new family of acrylic paints from the original acrylic paints.

Like the difference between Dupont Imron 500S and Dupont Imron EZ-3460S or Dupont Imron 3480S. All are part of the acrylic family, but only the 500S is polyurethane. The other two are urethane, which is cheaper, softer, and more VOC friendly then 500S.

As far as single-stage paints go, then I assume you are talking about paints such as Dupont Imron 5000, which is a urethane acrylic, and Dupont Imron 5.0, which is a polyurethane enamel. Very different paints and very different safety requirements for shooting them with the 5000 series being more VOC friendly.

Correct me if I am worng, but due to California's VOC regulations, I was pretty sure you could only get Dupont Imron VG-HG Polyurethanes which are water based? Those are tougher than urethane, but not as solid as the standard polyurethanes Dupont makes, which are available in the rest of the nation. Again, maybe this a source of confusion between us.