Ok, my wife was on her way home from classes when she said she heard a loud noise and happened to see a rock going down the road. When she got home she noticed two chips in the drivers side door...will try to get pictures later ( in the process of getting house packed up for a move, and have to see where camera is) The chips do look to be down to the metal, at least there is no dent. I have searched the forum, found a couple of different posts on repairing rock damage. I am basically asking if the repairs itself are pretty easy to accomplish for someone with little to no automotive painting experience, and if there are any no brainer ways to repair the damage and still look good...By the way the truck is only 5 months old...I have had it only about 3 months...any help would be greatly appreciated....

Chris

 

The only way to do it 100% would be sand and repaint the entire door, you could have it spot painted but depending on the color it might show......the cheap way is to just touch up the chips with touch-up paint......

 

i knew the story was bad when it started off with my wife driving my truck. then it got worse when it said that she told me she saw a rock going down the road. are you buying that story??? whats the real one that she is not giving you??? like it was said before repaint is only real way to fix it. truck less than 6 months old very easy to match super easy if it is a straight color (one with no flake). if it is just scratches no dent then a repaint on the door should be about $200 give or take $50 and out your truck for 1 1/2 to 2 days. you can try the little touch up bottle (finger nail style) but in most cases it will look worse than if you just left it alone. you might get feed back saying repaint is overkill, but you asked how to fix it not cover it up. if you do get the repaint demand on the entire panel not just a spot shot and a clear fade into factory. door jam not need repaint just the facing panel.

 

If it's not too big you might be able to lay some touch up paint in, with a fine paint brush, and call it good. Next would be to do the same with some high build primer i.e get a rattle can and spray it into the cap and apply it with the fine brush. Let that dry for a few hours and then lightly wet sand it smooth with some 2000 grit sand paper. Then apply the paint and after it dries do some very light wet sanding again. It the surounding paint gets dull from wet sanding use a fine polish to bring back the gloss. You might also be able to rattle can paint over the repair but it is VERY hard to get a close match to original. I suppose someone with an airbrush might get it close.

I redid a deep chip repair on my fender flare three times before I got it acceptable. Probably had 1.5 hours into the stupid repair.

Rockpick posted some chip repair kits as well.

But if you want it near perfect send it to a body shop. If you have a decent production paint shop around (Maaco ec.) they might fix it and repray the door for a couple hundred.

 

The truck is black, should be easy to match the paint I would think. The site I seen talked about putting sandpaper on a pencil eraser and using that to sand it down, then take a toothpick and lay the base coat in, a couple of coats of that, then put clearcoat on and build up until a little thicker than the original coat and sand down, then polish and wax. Sounds simple enough, but than again it probably is simple to screw up too...

 

If you are going to sand it down you are going to be making the spot bigger, which is fine assuming you can fill it and feather it into the surrounding area.
Then you will need to get the paint to blend in right with the rest of the door and that won't be easy. However if the chips are real small this may work OK.

I doubt you are going to be happy with the results of doing it yourself, assuming it's a nice truck. But you could always try and then take it to the shop if you are not happy with your effort.

 

Dude.... seriously