Touch up paint

[Chuck996]

Good afternoon,

Has anyone used Dr. Chip for touch up paint? I had the defuser -- plastic cover over my garage lights fall off and gouged my right fender -- top of fender. I have tried the normal touch up paint -- still looks bad. I have taken into a Body Shop and they wanted $350. to paint the front fender -- they said they can't do much better than I have. One problem is the car is Artic Silver a very hard color to blend.

Any help is appreciated.

Chuck --- Myrtle Beach

[PAULSPEED]

I just read the dr. colorchip FAQ stuff last night.

All light color cars need more work. They even say that touch up

paint does not work.

Suggest you read the FAQ.

Paul

[Long Islander]

I've tried Dr. Colorchip and never had good results. I would buy OEM touch-up paint and Langka. I've had much better results with Langka.

[Chuck996]

Thanks for the responses. I have read the FAQ -- thus the question. What is Langka???

Thanks,

Chuck

[whall]

www.langka.com

Bill

[domingo]

I've tried the Dr. Colorchip on my car that's lapisblau metallic & it does not work at all.

[porschenut]

Go with OEM

[smackboy1]

How involved do you want to get? I'm not an expert by any means, but I have used Dr. ColorChip, Langka and the old school wet sand and polish. I also have an arctic silver metallic and a seal grey metallic car. The metallic paint is really hard to get an invisible touch up repair and the light shade of the arctic silver makes it that much harder to hide. It doesn't matter what method you use or which touch up paint you use, the little flecks of metal in the repair are just not going to match the surrounding factory paint exactly. FWIW here is my summary:

Old school wet sand and polish - Use the factory touch up paint and some elbow grease. Done right this probably gives the best result, but it requires some skill and practice. Screw it up and you can make the damage even worse by sanding off too much paint. You also need to buy a bunch of different supplies. But if you want a repair where you can't feel the repair at all with your fingertips or fingernails, this is the way. Here is a set of really good instructions

http://bugmanweb.com/c6/c6files/paintchipsbynon.pdf

Langka - Basically Langka is a chemical (feels like lotion and I suspect it maybe an acetone compound). When repairing scratches, instead of wet sanding down the touch up paint blob, you use the Langka on a t-shirt to remove the excess paint and smooth the blob so it's flush with the factory paint surface. Langka does not dissolve the factory paint so it's safer than wet sanding. To do it right you should probably still use polish and hand glaze to finish the repair. IMHO, although it's easier and more idiot proof than wet sanding, the results are not as good. You just can't get the surface of the repair as smoothly blended with the surrounding paint with a t-shirt. I can blend the repair better wet sanding than using Langka. I use Langka to remove the bulk of the blob, but finish it with some wet sanding.

http://www.langka.com/

Dr. ColorChip - It's a very easy DIY system which uses what looks like thinned touch up paint and a chemical like Langka. The paint is smeared into the scratch and any excess is wiped off using the Langka-like chemical. It's easy, fast and idiot proof, but the results are not as good as the other methods. I use it when I am lazy and I have to repair a larger area with lots of small scratches and it's in an out of the way location.

http://drcolorchip.com/

Edited September 30, 2009 by smackboy1

[Long Islander]

Smackboy1, thanks for the detailed instructions.

[cakasa]

I've used paintscratch with excellent results. Check em out.

[http://www.paintscratch.com/apple.html]