Buy a car with mediocre paint and you'll never get a rock chip, scratch, bird poo or anything on it. Repaint that same car and it becomes a magnet.
I realize it's small, but it's a 1.5 year old professional respray and I am really trying to take care of this car and it's paint. I'm not adverse to paint work, it's actually much closer related to my day job than wrenching is. However my only car painting has been Lemons-quality-full-car-backyard-color-changes and that's not what I need here.
Anybody have tips on the correct way to fix this? Hopefully the answer isn't "body shop" although my local body shop is cool and can get me paint if necessary.
Duke
MegaDork
9/18/18 8:10 a.m.
DW's 1-year-old S60 just got run into by a deer. Yes, the deer hit us. There is a 6" scratch in the LRQ.
I got ahold of the guy who does used-car touch-up for local dealers. I figure he'll be relatively cheap, good, and fast.
Is that metal or primer we see?
You can probably do a decent job of hiding it by filling it with touch up paint (you can get finger polish type bottles of matched paint off the interwebs). The hardest part is getting the fill to the level of the old paint, will likely be multiple layers. The paint will never truly match (metallics are a bitch like that) but with a small area only you should notice.
aircooled said:
Is that metal or primer we see?
I have yet to find out. Weather and work have not let me. I'm hoping primer. I guess I'll wet sand with 2000+ grit to get the scratch flat and see exactly what I'm working with.
Did you keep some extra paint during the respray? (Hopefully, yes) I've had decent luck with similar issues with a paint fill followed by a "brush in" clear, followed by a wet-sand and multi-stage polish. Tips: Be sure to clean it out carefully before the re-touch. Get a good quality small hobby brush. Be sure you don't "roll" the touch up paint over the edges of the remaining clear coat. Let that coat dry for a hour of two. "Fill" the rest of the chip with a brush in clear and let it dry at least overnight. (I usually wait a couple days) Then wet sand the chip until it's smooth using 800/1000 grit. Then polish it the rest of the way out with a multi-stage paint polish (I like 3M stuff). I managed to get 2 similar marks out of my Miata after the kids dumped a bike over on it. (If you ever hear one of the kids yell "Stupid bike" from the garage, take a big, deep breath before you go to check on them)
If it's not a base/clear paint, all this is probably irrelevant.
