Paint Chipped

[JCE]

I've got a chip about the size of an eraser head on my hood. I bought some touchup up paint from the dealer ($30 ).

I tried to touch it up but it looks like crap. It is such a bad chip I cannot get the touch up to fill smoothly with the rest.

Any tips? Thanks.

[Hawk Lax]

check out autopia and then search touch up on their forum. It involves over filling the chip with touch up color and then clear coat and then wet sanding to match the surrounding area. Good luck

[BCA]

I just touched up a chip about that size on my passenger door and did not wet sand. Gotta love these Houston-area roads. I'll try to make this as brief as possible but let me know if you have specific questions.

Basically, I did a homemade version of the Langka kit that you can buy online. The steps are to over-fill the scratch with touch up paint (using multiple coats over a period of days if necessary depending on depth of the chip), then let fully dry, then remove the excess (blob). Apply the paint with the tip of a toothpick being careful not to apply too much at one time. Once you've got the chip over-filled slightly and the paint is dry, the next step is to remove the blob. To do this, I experimented and found something that worked really, really well. Take a good quality paper towel (I used Bounty) and wrap it around some kind of flexible plastic card. You want just a single layer of paper towel on the side of the card that you will be touching your paint with (fold up the excess on the other/back side). I used some random Enterprise Rent-a-Car card that I found in a drawer...it was like a laminated flexible card...you want something more durable than a business card and not as stiff as a credit card. Open a bottle of 91% rubbing alcohol (I found that it worked MUCH better than regular 70%) and dampen a small area of the paper towel with it, and then run that dampened part of the card over the blob as many times as necessary until the chip is perfectly level with the surrounding area. The alcohol is a solvent and will actually re-soften the touch-up paint, removing your excess and leaving the chip completely flat. If you remove too much of the touch-up paint or otherwise mess up, you can just start over, so don't worry. After you're done, just leave it alone and give that touch-up paint plenty of time to dry (days or even weeks) before doing any polishing or sealing.

I actually couldn't believe I was using a paper towel on my paint but I knew that any micro-marring I would cause could be easily polished out. To my surprise, it really didn't scratch at all. But this past weekend when I had my buffer out for some spot-polishing, I went over the area with a finishing polish on a finishing pad just to shine up the touch-up paint and fully correct the surrounding area. It had been about a month since I did my blob removal, so the paint was plenty dry.

This process is pretty foolproof. The only complication I could foresee you having is with your metallic paint...the touch-up will likely look darker than the surrounding paint because of the metallic flakes being compressed and not laying correctly (I discovered this phenomenon with my old silver E46). I don't know what to tell you about that...it's just a characteristic of metallic touch-up paints. I guess you could just try doing a base layer of paint and then multiple layers of clear to create the blob and that might turn out better. I didn't have to worry about that because my car is white.

Good luck!

[Hawk Lax]

^^Sounds good!!!

[JCE]

Thanks for the responses on this thread. Yeah, I think the metallic paint may be a killer.

I have a buddy that used to be in the auto body repair business, and I think he still does stuff on the side. I am thinking he can cover the surrounding area and touch up the spot with a gun after filling/sanding etc., and finalize it with clear coat and polish as necessary. I don't want alot of area resprayed.

I have put 2 coats of touch up on it and it is still not filled too much. It looks really bad. Even if he cannot get the metallic color to match just right the area will be small enough where it wouldn't be too noticible. I am hoping he can keep this area smaller than say a dime. That would be much better than the way it looks now.

What do you guys think?

PS - yes the Houston roads are a bitch but I can't stop driving this car. I've got another vehicle I "planned" to drive back and forth to work every day lol.

[BCA]

No problem

Some kind of "air brush" method like you describe, done by someone who knows what they're doing, is definitely the next best thing and the very best option really. When I briefly sold Toyotas in Dallas about 10 years ago, we had a guy that could do some amazing work. Unfortunately, there are a lot of hacks out there. As long as you trust your friend's talent, I say give it a shot.

One other thing: try not to let it bother you too much. I'm anal as hell about my cars and that chip bugged the shit out of me when it first happened. But here we are about 6-7 weeks later, the chip is fixed and barely noticeable, and it doesn't really bother me anymore. On any car that is driven daily, these things are going to happen. This is especially true with these new water-based paints, which are supposedly much more prone to chipping.

[JCE]

Originally Posted by BCA

No problem

Some kind of "air brush" method like you describe, done by someone who knows what they're doing, is definitely the next best thing and the very best option really. When I briefly sold Toyotas in Dallas about 10 years ago, we had a guy that could do some amazing work. Unfortunately, there are a lot of hacks out there. As long as you trust your friend's talent, I say give it a shot.

One other thing: try not to let it bother you too much. I'm anal as hell about my cars and that chip bugged the shit out of me when it first happened. But here we are about 6-7 weeks later, the chip is fixed and barely noticeable, and it doesn't really bother me anymore. On any car that is driven daily, these things are going to happen. This is especially true with these new water-based paints, which are supposedly much more prone to chipping.

Thanks for the response. I understand about the anal stuff, and I do go sometimes a week or two without driving it to work. But, I have to walk by it every morning in the garage to get to my truck parked in the driveway. It's like walking past my bed every morning if Megan Fox was laying there naked.

Mine is in a bad spot...it is about a foot up onto the hood in front of the driver's headlight. SG is a pretty brilliant metallic color, especially up close so this touch up looks like shit. I figure the rock was about the size of a marble, and it either came from above or hit me at a whack angle from the front. I heard it when it hit but didn't know how bad it was until later.

I will check around. I haven't spoken to him in a year or two so I don't even know if he will do it on the side...he is not in that business anymore. Maybe I will post something in the southwest forum for some suggestions on local body shops.