| How-To touch up paint chips |
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If you have any paint chips you may say oh well....I need a new paint jog. Well you can do it yourself. Of course it's about impossible to do a perfect fix, but you can come pretty close if you have a LOT of time on your hands! Here's my procedure:
- Wet down some 1500-grit sandpaper and feather the edges of the paint chip.
- Dab some touch-up paint in the chip so it makes a little mound. Use a toothpick to apply the touch up paint instead of the brush
that comes with the bottle (if you're using the touch up in
a tiny bottle from Ford). The brush is too clumsy and is hard to
control
- This stuff shrinks considerably as it dries! Wait about 15 minutes or so, and repeat this for a few more coats.
- Wait a day or two.
- When the paint is cured, wet-sand it so it is level with the surface using the 1500 (or even 1000) grit sandpaper. It may help to
tape off the touch-up area so you don't sand the surrounding paint. If you do get the paint a little bit, don't worry! We'll address
that in a minute.
- Finally, take off the masking tape if you used any, and wet-sand the chip and surrounding area with 2000-grit. Then, use some
fine-cut clearcoat-safe rubbing compound (3M makes good stuff) and use it on the area to smooth things out and remove any sanding marks.
- Then, put a few coats of wax over the area and it should look almost invisible!!
Note: It isn't worth the trouble to sand down the paint on a white car. Touching them up is a real pain because the bare touch up paint is easily contaminated as the car gets dirty. For a white car, I say to just carefully apply the touch up paint with a toothpick and leave it.
BTW, to protect your sanity, only use this method on highly visible
chips. :) Just dab it on in less-noticeable areas!
Adam, Irv
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