[xlr47]

my black xlr has a small ( slightly less than the size of one of the happy faces ) chip of paint missing in the roof. The dealer has tried to fill, sand and touch up paint it all to no avail. Its just too deep, and the touch up paint eventually disappears. It appears the only option is live with it or have the whole top panel painted. What do you think? Do I have any other options? The dealer has been very good to work with me on this, and on other service issues. They have an excellent body shop. What would you do? Any input from any of you gurus would be much appreciated.

 

[rick1827]

If it was my car, I would have the strip the entire top, prime and repaint.

The reason why is that the top of the car is relatively small and painting it should be only a few hundred bucks. The real question to me is who do you want to do the work?

Black paint is the toughest to get right. I think that I would look into a local body shop with a great reputation for painting black. It will also be a lot cheaper.

As for fixing the chip, you need to fill the chipped area. They make compounds for this however, you need to have a very delicate touch. If the chip is as small as you say, I would fill it with touch-up paint for a couple of days in a row. That will build up the paint to the point where is can be wet sanded and repolished. I would look for a local body shop that specializes in custom paint jobs. They will have a lot of experience fixing this type of problems. The boys at Cadillac are use to just repainting. Like most things in life, fixing this right is almost an art.