Rock chip repair advice.

[eurospek]

What's the best way of repairing this rock chip, the paint is down to the bare metal, also you can see the crack in the paint along with minimal edge lift around the paint chip as well. This is on the hood of my dad's 09 Outback, the rock also hit the glass but didn't even nick it.

 

[tempter927]

I believe you have three options.



1. find a mobile paint chip repair guy to come by and repair the chip for you. ( I have had nice results from a guy that the benz dealership used, although rock chip wasnt as large).



2. try and find the exact same paint, I would say call up a subaru dealer and see if they sell it. 2nd get one of those paint chip repair kits, it should have a cleaner, paint thinner and clear sealant. silver gray is a tough color to blend perfectly as opposed to white or black and that is a pretty nasty scratch/chip.



3. take it to the stealership/ autobody shop and let them rip you off with subpar work and inflated bills.



Goodluck and if you can post an after picture.

 

[Accumulator]

eurospek- Good macro pic!



No matter what, you'll see the repair, so I'd resign myself to that.



I'd use either a rust converter or a primer on the bare metal, then apply the touchup paint with a small (probably about a sixe 0, or "oh" ) artist's brush, first the basecoat and then the clear (more of the latter than the former).



Besides your dealer, you can google up "Paintscratch dot com" and/or "automotive touchup dot com". I've used both and sometimes they match, sometimes they don't. There's also DrColorchip (a single-paint/no clear system) but I've never tried their stuff.



That'll leave you with a "blob" of paint on the repair. If you choose to level it to make it less obvious, you can do it chemically with Langka or mechanically with sandpaper. But if you do the latter you'll have to compound/polish out the sanding scratches, which is often easier said than done.