I recently purchased a 2021 Atomic Silver LC. The front hood did not have any PPF and there are several rock chips (I also read in the forum about the difficulty in repairing chips on atomic silver). This may seem to be a silly question, but I want to PPF the front and the hood: how do you suggest I go about it? Repair chips and then PPF? Just want to make sure I'm not missing anything or, if anyone could share best practices, I would greatly appreciate it.

 

Choosing the right PPF shop is crucial. When I had full PPF applied to my Infrared, I provided the shop with a Dr. ColorChip kit for touch-ups. However, after the installation, I regretted not doing the touch-ups myself, as I later found several missed spots.

 

Yup agreed. A good shop will cost more but they will do things like scrutinize for imperfections and correct them before applying the film. There is a limit to that effort though, they can't do magic to make things 100% invisible like a re-paint will do. They should be well hidden though by and large.

 

Lots of chips and some that are deep: best to get a body shop to do their thing on it before getting the wrap.
If there's just a few small ones and you're going to a good ppf shop - they should have the connections and ability to get the touch up paint and fill themselves (mine did this).

I'd actually lean on the ppf installer's recommendations. Assuming it's a well established place, they'll have hundreds of car's worth of experience and will point you down the best path.

 

If it was me, and the car already had more than 5 rock chips, I wouldn’t bother with the PPF. The rock chips give the car some character.
If it has less than 5 chips that are easy to cover up with touch up, then I would touch it up myself and get PPF on it. Don’t trust the PPF guy will do it or get every single one of them.

 

I just got back from Vegas and while there I scraped the driver side bumper against a curb stop. I also found that the front bumper got peppered with stones and I have chips all over the bumper face beside the grille. .All of the damn semi trucks so pebbles and grit comes hard at the front end. I'm getting it repaired with a claim to the insurance co. The person at the body shop said that the bumper is one piece and that instead of trying to repair the plastic by smoothing it down, sanding, filling, painting and add in the stone chips as well, it would cost the insurance company less if a replacement bumper was ordered and painted. Checked the price of the OEM bumper and it was less than $350 dollars, even lower with vendor pricing. I would just be out of my deductible, $500. I noticed that the chrome grille surround and the lower flat chrome molding were looking a little rough so I asked them to order them, charge me for the parts and install them on the new bumper. No additional labor since they would have had to remove the entire front bumper and grille and transfer all of the other parts to the new bumper anyway. Since the car is a 2018, PPF on the entire car isn't cost effective to me, but I may have just the front end PPF'd. I'll be going to Vegas in a couple of months again.

 

Make sure you ask your body guys about letting the paint cure before you ppf it. If the shop you have uses lamps/bakes the paint to cure it then you should be good, otherwise you're gonna wanna give it some time

 

This is interesting as I have had a couple of similar situations, but with a $1,000 deductible.

I decided to just pay for the repairs rather than involve the insurance company.

E.g., for a $1,300 bumper respray repair, I didn't want to give the insurance company an excuse to raise my rates that are already high with a teenager driving on my policy.

Have tried to get the insurance company to tell me how much they would payout if the car was totaled but can't get an answer out of them.

When I mentioned I was thinking of dropping coverage for the car but keeping the liability coverage, they pushed to keep my paying all the premiums.

The problem is that if you keep your car in excellent condition, you will lose because most probably you'll only get book value.

So if you have a car with a $20,000 book value and are paying $2,500/ year to protect the car, I'm not sure it's worth it.

When do the rest of you think about dropping collision and comprehensive?

 

I typically drop the coverage when it cost more than 10% the value of the vehicle on an annual basis to insure it with comp and collision. I was almost at that point with my GS when I got rid of it for the LC, basically was worth 17 give or take and premium was almost 1200/yr for it.

 

It just kind of irritates me that I've been paying premiums for decades, never made a claim, yet the premiums still go up.

At this stage of life, losing a $20K car is not a problem and I'd rather not keep giving my money to the insurance conglomerates.