Just wondering if anyone finds the paint chips really easily or is suffering from paint chips on the bonnet??

one thing that no one does in the country is use the front masks that covers the front of the car to preven stone chips. They use them aot in the US.

What a car bra.......they look uurrggh!

You can get invisible plastic stuff like what is at the bottom of your rear door beside the arch. (IS200/300)

yep I get a few, what I do is wash car, apply pin drop of paint let it dry then polish it down with auto-glym polish. Seems to work a treat.

I have one or two small chips on my bonnet & front bumper

[Edited on 23-3-2002 by Chris Shipley]

car bra looks horrid but everyone complains about stone chips... hehe

I've got more chips at 14k miles than my old car had at 90 thousand
I've never seen a car chip so much, even on the A post - and they're going rusty too.
Lexus describe a "superior" paint process and galvanised body - are they sure?

is that not under the 10 year anti corrosion warranty? or do stone chips void that?

I don't think corrosion due to chips is covered - it's normally perforation due to manufacturing defect.
I will fix them myself - just need some decent weather and the time
At least now I know why they gave me a pot of paint when I collected the car :smilegrin:

the only bummer about the paint they give you is that it is only base paint. Thats why it always looks dotty when you touch the paintwork up.

Hi everyone, this paint problem of easy chipping seems to be effecting all of us, I think we hould send Lexus UK report on this and see if we can get something done about it. There are solutions to protect from this, in USA you can have a tough polime clear coat etc to stop chips. If you want I will draft a polite letter and E-mail it to them.

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, although I'd probably want to see what my dealer has to say about it first (not very much I expect).

i asked the dealer if anyone had complained before about the paint and it was a no! this i am surprised about as ever the clear coat is really soft - brush past and u have a scratch!!

Hmmm - washed my pride and joy at the weekend (now 2 weeks old from new) and found my first stone chip on the front bonnet. I'm kind of reluctant to start messing about with the paint pot I got already - and with my shakey hands I'd not be too confident on what I might do to my "luxury" car!

This is a bit worrying, so I'd certainly back superchargedmorph's idea of sending Lexus UK an e-mail about this.

Gareth

Hmm this scares me as my car is going to be delivered tomorrow and I'd feel f****d if I managed to get stone chips that quickly... I've been scouring the net and here are some links I've found:
www.armourfend.com (looks expensive, sounds great)
www.chipsaway.co.uk (well if you do get any are these the people to call?)
http://www.diyfixit.co.uk/motor/bodywork/s...s/scratches.htm (I found this site quite useful if you're in the mood for a DIY touch-up.
http://www.autopaints.co.uk/tetrosyl.htm (Trtrosyl... looks like one of those 'as seen on tv' things, but I guess looks can be deceiving... anyone had any experiences?)

It certainly seems a common problem on the IS - to the person writing to Lexus about the matter: Perhaps we could suggest they subsidise the cost of getting Armourfend or similar?

[Edited on 27-3-2002 by GCHQAgent]

[Edited on 27-3-2002 by GCHQAgent]

i have the x-pel kit on mine which stops a lot of chips but it only covers the front 40 cm of the bonett so u will still get chips further up the hood.

but beware: if you order the kit from the US obvoiusly its for the is300,, the kit wont fit properly unless you do a slight mod.

An update. I called into my Lexus Aberdeen dealer today to let them see the stone chip on my bonnet (admittedly tiny - but you tend to notice these things on a 2 week old car!!). I mentioned about the forum on this site having this discussion going - which was causing me concerns that this may be an issue with the IS200s. They said they certainly weren't aware of the cars having a problem in this area (which I kind of expected ;¬).

Anyway, they got some paint and touched it up for me there and then (the guy used a toothpick to apply it by the way, which he said was best way to apply a very small blob to small chips like this).

Oh and they also claimed to have never heard of this site!!

Oh, and then I got home, and was looking at his fix - when I noticed I've got another chip! Aaargh!!

well they have now:D

not all the dealers know of the website... were working our way round :smilegrin:

now they know.. thats another to tick off the list :smug:

fluff34567 is right. I find that the sappire blue colour shows up scratches and chips the worst. My IS200 Sport really needs a damn good T-cut....roll on the better weather!

Thanks for all the tips.

Hi Claire

Welcome to the Club!

I've got a couple of chips on the bonnet, but I have more problems with stone chips on the windscreen, now I have 2 small cracks :mad:

warning: don't have the windscreen replaced by lexus if the cracks get bigger

i've probably moaned about this before - in the first few months of owning the car i had 3 replacement windscreens 'cos they kept cracking (and in one case shattering) - i went to my dealer as i wanted it to be put in properly

after the final crack, i had autoglass do it - not as tidy an install but it's been fine since (touch wood)

and i've got 6 or 7 stone chips on the bonnet :mad:

They are talking bull! Did you talk to Alan or Derek the mechanic, because I have told them all about the site. If you talked to the Gray haired guy, then I understand as he knows nothing about anything!!

i did my chips today... thing is they enver go rusty because of the galvanised body.

I going to have the boot and bonnet resprayed anway..

its not just the IS's that suffer with chips, my old GS bonnet was covered in them.

The new GS has about 15/20 since xmas eve, i had Chips Away out last week to repair one the size of a pea on the front wheel arch. Cost £35 but they did an excellent job respraying the area after filling the chip hole with filler.

My series one GS had less chips after 74,000 miles than this new one after 3 months. I guess thay must have changed the paint?

:mad::mad:

superchargedmorph - In view of further comments on this, do you still intend to raise the issue with Lexus UK? I'd appreciate if you did. Cheers

lexussport,

Do Chips Away do around the country? Please let me know and I will call them and arrange something for the website.. sound like a handy company to know

Steve

They operate under a Franchise method so the guy that came to me lived just down the road.

Their Website will enable you to find out if they cover your area.


www.chipsaway.co.uk

I've used them 3 times with excellent results.

Hi All,

I'm disappointed with the number of stone chips I have on my Black IS200. My car has done 30K in 18 months and theres a large number (50+?) stone chips just on the bonnet. With most of them you can see the grey/silver primer or a white coat.

There again some cars are just prone to it, and if your local council is like Worcs Districy Council it doesnt help when road resurfacing is just a splash (tar) and dash (grit)...

I cant imagine a uk Lexus owner putting a car bra on... It would look too odd..

I'll use chipsaway or just get the bonnet completely resprayed when I sell...

I think I will end up having my bonnet resprayed,every time I go somewhere no matter if it's 5 miles or 20 miles I come back with more stone chips:mad:

My IS200 picks up stone chips and scratches really badly too. It's quite frustrating. After seeing the other postings I may contact Chips Away - seems as though they are a good bet?

is there not a laquer you have coated on your car? More than likely have seen this on a US forum.. not sure if it is available here though?

I think the IS200 is a great car with one problem - soft paint that chips really easily. Given the quality of the rest of the car I am surprised that Lexus have not addressed this.
My wife and I share cars to spread the mileage so our two cars do the same journeys, almost on alternate days. When we first bought the Lexus our other car was a Fiesta. When we sold the Fiesta it had about half the number of chips on the bonnet as the Lexus though because we had had it longer it had covered 3 times the mileage! Our other car is now a BMW 5 series and we have covered 7k miles in it. During that time the Lexus has added a number of new, very visibile chips, the BMW does not have a single mark! Same journeys remember.
We should be able to do something about this... any ideas?

The assumption seems to be the paint is too soft ... I'd take the opposite view.

I think it's too hard and therefore brittle.

Agreed though - it IS a problem ...

Yes, the paint maybe too brittle. Whatever the reason it certainly chips easily.
Has anyone had any success with getting dealers to fix the chips? In my experience they are normally very good at responding to requests if they are at fault.
If it was just "one of those things" that might happen to any car I would accept it and leave it at that, but I can quantifiably show that the Lexus has a much lower chip resistance than a Ford Fiesta and (more importantly for Lexus) a BMW.
BTW, my car is sapphire blue - it seems this is especially bad for stone chips?

I picked up an ex-demo 200 SE the weekend before last, with 3800 miles on the clock. On Sunday, I noticed 2 big stone chips about a third of the way up the bonnet that had obviously been filled in (badly) prior to delivery. I spoke to the Dealer today, who said that to remedy, the bonnet would need to be painted, but didn't sound at all keen to help me. He said he would find out who did the paintwork before I got it and that I should drop it in next time I was passing to get it looked at. As this is not very convenient, what course of action do I have available to me?
BTW - the car was wet when I picked it up so didn't notice at the time.

how about this for a nice little tip......

goto a company who specialises in car advertisements... you know the sort..... like taxi firms have all over their car.... they should be able to get an almost exact colour copy of your cars, if not, you could use clear film.... they do it so well you wouldnt see it.... and i'm sure it wouldn't be too hard on the bank balance....

tip 1 of jeffs 1001 handy tips for lexus owners... available in most good bookshops for 9.99

thats not a bad idea Jeff....

then when it comes to selling just peel it off

First of all, I think it's NOT a problem of paint.... it's just because we LEXUS drivers are much too fast!!

Now, let me show you all, what your bonnet will look like after 90000 km of Autobahn!

Let's try, if you can find all stone chips in the picture?? :?:

I will post the answer later.....

Here we go:

as in the pic most of my chips were on the front 1/4 of the bonnet and i got ****** off woth filling them in all the time so thats why i got the x-pel kit since then i have had one chip but that has gone thru the plastic! so i hould hate to think how big it would have been if the plastic wasnt there??

So here is the result: 33! :o

I compared them with the bonnet, so some might be hard to find in the first picture...

When I bought my car it had some serious chips on the bonnet and bumper, so I asked the dealer to fix them before I collected the car, big mistake!!:mad::mad: the colour they used to touch up is several shades darker and they look far worse than before!! I have the blue IS and I am finding it scratches and chips like mad. Every time I drive it I find another. I think I will go and have them done by an expert. I took my last car to a paint specialist and it came back looking like new!!