Paint Chip Repair Questions?

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goherd90

New member
I have some minor paint chips near the front hood of my new car (several the size of tip of lead pencil). I just purchased the pen/brush touch up paint (mopar) and applied very small amount last night.



The chips are now less noticeable due to the coloring in of the chip, however the FINISH is not smooth and are still noticeable close up or when your run your hand over them.



I've been reading up on WET SANDING and perhaps thinking this would help to BLEND into the finish a bit better, however I am very nervous as most of the post said that you should not attempt unless your experienced with a rotar (which I am not).



I have a PC, but don't want to mess with a rotary. Do I have any other option or do I need to just LIVE with the results that I have?
 
I think the big concern is that you have to be very careful when wetsanding the paint, or you will take it down to the primer.



As for removing sanding marks with a PC, you can easily remove 3000 grit sanding marks with the right pad and polish.
 
Did you lacquer the chip ? If not, you should find it easy enough to polish back to a flat finish by hand rather than use a machine, or wetsand - just takes a bit more patience, but at least it's fool-proof (no offence) :xyxthumbs
 
What works for me is the Langka paint chip repair kit. For minor chip like yours, it'll flatten it out in a second. I am sure that some members here have tried that product before. So far, it's work great for my FJ.
 
Kriminal said:
Did you lacquer the chip ? If not, you should find it easy enough to polish back to a flat finish by hand rather than use a machine, or wetsand - just takes a bit more patience, but at least it's fool-proof (no offence) :xyxthumbs
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the paint repair pen did say lacquer on it...so I'd assume yes.
 
goherd90 said:
the paint repair pen did say lacquer on it...so I'd assume yes.
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Hmm....I think I'd still have a go by hand first, just to be on the safe side. If nothing is coming off on the cloth after a few goes with an abrasive polish, you may find that your next step would be to move to the PC with an abrasive pad - I removed some "proud" chip repairs on my hood using the PC with Menzerna PO85RD3.01....they're definitely much flatter now, and I believe THEY were touched in with the paint/lacquer mixture, as I couldn't do anything with these by hand.



I definitely wouldn't just settle for what you have - I'm sure your car's worth more than that :2thumbs:



If you did wanna have a go at the wetsanding, you could try the "punching a hole in the paper, and sticking the dot on the end of a pencil" trick. This'll allow you to be more accurate, and concentrate on small areas, such as stone chip touch-ins :)
 
Kriminal said:
Hmm....I think I'd still have a go by hand first, just to be on the safe side. If nothing is coming off on the cloth after a few goes with an abrasive polish, you may find that your next step would be to move to the PC with an abrasive pad - I removed some "proud" chip repairs on my hood using the PC with Menzerna PO85RD3.01....they're definitely much flatter now, and I believe THEY were touched in with the paint/lacquer mixture, as I couldn't do anything with these by hand.



I definitely wouldn't just settle for what you have - I'm sure your car's worth more than that :2thumbs:



If you did wanna have a go at the wetsanding, you could try the "punching a hole in the paper, and sticking the dot on the end of a pencil" trick. This'll allow you to be more accurate, and concentrate on small areas, such as stone chip touch-ins :)
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Sine I haven't tried ANYTHING yet...I think I'll take the least aggressive approach and go from there. I will try smoothing out by hand w/polish and pad first. If nothing then will try with my pc and then last step I will try wet sand. I did read on here about using a real small piece of sand paper that fits at the end of an eraser....I will try that route as well.



thanks for the tips
 
Langka is a good product, you just have to real careful with it or you can easily remove all of the paint that you put in the chip. I was never able to get a perfect result with it, the results were pretty good. On positive thing is that you can keep trying until you get a satisfactory result.



I am currently trying the Touchup 123 system, but have not come to a conclusion whether it is any better than the Langka/factory touchup paint method.
 
goherd90 said:
Sine I haven't tried ANYTHING yet...I think I'll take the least aggressive approach and go from there. I will try smoothing out by hand w/polish and pad first. If nothing then will try with my pc and then last step I will try wet sand. I did read on here about using a real small piece of sand paper that fits at the end of an eraser....I will try that route as well.



thanks for the tips
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Can I just add one more thing ?



Go careful should you opt for the sand paper on the pencil eraser method......you have to stick it on and let it dry. I done this, and when the area got sprayed with a soapy solution to create a safe barrier between the wet and dry and the paintwork, the wet and dry actually "curled" (due to the wetness) which left a couple of nasty lines on the edges.
 
Few of my chip touch-ups turn out all that swell anyhow, but the Langka works pretty well for me. I use it to level the color coat to just below the surface of the surrounding paint, and then I apply the clear. I'll wetsand the clear with something mild like 2-3000. If you use Meguiar's Unigrit paper you can do your correction without a rotary, or at least I've been able to (even on hard Audi clear). It *does* take a pretty aggressive product though, and not all such compounds can be used by hand; I used the old 3M PI-III RC 05933.
 
I’ve have mixed results repairing chips… some are invisible, while others need to be cleaned out and started over.

This is possible because the chip repair paint is lacquer and the body paint is something else that doesn’t dissolve in the thinner, so I just remove the unsightly repairs and start over.

So for me it’s a matter of doing it over and over until I get it to a point where I’m satisfied.

I use 600, 2k and 3k grit sand paper dots glued to a cork tipped dowel to prep then I wet sand it level, and compound the spots.

Suffice it to say, I have many chip repairs that are difficult (for me) to find…

(aside) My pride caused me to send pics of them to my brother, until he insisted I stop emailing him JPG’s of “nothing�.



Lil Dog in a big pound
 
Has anyone tried the product from Dr.Colorchip.com? It looked like it might be easier to do or get to stick than the Langka, but I haven't tried either method yet. I too have a couple areas I should tackle.
 
Last night I tried blackfire srt w/white pad on pc and it did improve the roughness of the repair. I was still not satisfied so I got the orange pad out with the blackfire srt compound out and it did a much better job of smoothing out. The repair is still noticeable but at least when I run my hand over the repair it is much smoother. I am satisfied with the results and I am sure as I continue to repair more of these hood chips I will become better.
 
goherd90 said:
Last night I ...did a much better job of smoothing out.. I am satisfied with the results and I am sure as I continue to repair more of these hood chips I will become better.
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Glad to hear you improved it to your satisfaction. Yeah, with practice you'll get better at it.
 
goherd90 said:
Last night I tried blackfire srt w/white pad on pc and it did improve the roughness of the repair. I was still not satisfied so I got the orange pad out with the blackfire srt compound out and it did a much better job of smoothing out. The repair is still noticeable but at least when I run my hand over the repair it is much smoother. I am satisfied with the results and I am sure as I continue to repair more of these hood chips I will become better.
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Good job. Glad to hear it worked without having to go TOO extreme with sanding.



Practice makes perfect bud.....I'm sure you'll reach perfection in no time :bigups
 
yeah...just hearing the word SANDING for a novice like me gets me worried. The 2 chips that were side by side were so small (size of lead pencil) that I am not sure sanding was even necessary
 
goherd90 said:
yeah...I am not sure sanding was even necessary
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Well, I gotta admit that I don't wetsand all my paint chips...just depends how badly they bug me with the blobbed-up paint on there. For thht matter, I'm holding off on touching up the chips on the S8 because I don't want to open a can of worms...the other 99.999% of the car looks fine just the way it is.
 
goherd90 said:
yeah...just hearing the word SANDING for a novice like me gets me worried. The 2 chips that were side by side were so small (size of lead pencil) that I am not sure sanding was even necessary
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I hear ya....the word sanding doesn't enter my detailing vocabulary either - especially after what happened to my Lexus ! To cut a long story short, I ended up calling a mobile f'k-up repairer :wall



Never again !! :D
 
I tried the Langka kit for a small chip in my hood. My brief review is in THIS THREAD. Bottom line is it did't do it for me and I ended up just using the dealer touch-up paint. The chip is still there but it really doesn't look all that bad. Hardly noticeable.



I also got a small scratch on my door. Langka didn't work on that either so I got the Touchup123 kit. It just came a couple of days ago so I haven't tried it yet. I hope to get to it this weekend and will post my results when I do.



Not saying Langka doesn't work, it just didn't work for me for that specific chip or scratch.



LL
 
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