HHRNYC

My Victory Red with almost 3,000 city and highway miles without a single issue at all, has a few wear and tear scratches (some from nails of our 60lbs Portuguese water dog jumping into the back), dents (some SUV door opening up into my parked honey, in a BJ's parking lot - so much for those savings!) and other unexplained chips.

Is it smarter to have these annoying but part-of-life damages fixed right away, or to wait until you have accumulated enough of them to warrant a better price for a paint job. Or do you wait until you get hit and then you include them into your insurance claim?

Is it always necessary to have a whole panel painted in order to repair a nick in the paint? Are there easy to use (and money saving) products out on the market that can take care of scratches in the paint? Is the Victory Red paint easily available?

This is my first "new" car in almost 40 years of driving; I have driven great cars, including a great Peugeot 505 Turbo and Jaguar XJ6 but this Cherry the Red offers the most fun I've had in a car ever. So that's all good! I have never had to maintain a brand new car so I appreciate some advice.

Keep in mind that I do all my driving and mostly parallel parking in NYC (I know how rough I used to be in tight spots in my Jag with its real bumpers with lots of rubber!).

Soon I will have to deal with winter as well. Should I get different tires with cheaper rims for winter driving?

Thanks!

Dan in NYC

tomw

This is what I did to keep my 170 Pound Neapolitan Mastiff with scraping the paint with his nails!

HHRNYC

Good idea! What did you use? Also, are there specific rubber strips for protection for just this spot?

hyperv6

Door dents can be repaired most times with paint less dent removal. IT just depends if you want them to accmulate till they hit your deductable or just pay as you go.

Chips most often cam be touched up in Victory red faily easy. Dupli color makes it.

You build it up and then sand it down with a Meguires sanding stone then buff it out with several levels of polish.

Also a detailer can do the same if you have not skill or experiance with this.

The bottom line is panint the panel it the last resort and you have several options before you go to the paint option.

Check your options as they are not as expensive or extreem as you think.

tomw

This is a VW Part.......It uses 2 disc's screwed to the mat the top of the Disk is Velcroed and the bottom of the pad is velcroed.......
Chevy does not have an SS specific rubber pad.........the one for the LT can be trimmed to fit the SS