Hey NAM, Just wondering if anyone here has had any luck with touch up paint on big scratches and rock chips in their MINI.
What would you recommend to use? I'm looking into Dr colorchip touchup paint but they don't have very many reviews and don't know how well their paint will fill in my scratches.

Here is my bumper, which is worst on my MINI.


Here is my roof



So what do you think? How much would a body shop charge for something like this?
Could I just stick with touch up paint and get fairly good results?

Thanks NAM!

 

You'll find many discussions and comments in Detaling 101

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ch-to-buy.html

 

The Dr. Colorchip stuff works pretty well, it doesn't leave blobs like paint pens do. I used it on my car a little - I'll probably go over the rest of the car in the spring. I think I need to go over the spots I did, they're colored in and match well but they're not filled in. I tried to do them that same day but it wasn't working - I think it needs to dry a couple days before doing a second coat. It works the best on tiny chips, it's more difficult to work on larger ones. Probably impossible on anything dime-sized or larger.

Overall, the paint color matched very well (new car, non-metallic colors) and you can't tell at all from a distance. Even close up I have to strain to find the spots I did.

However, I paid $100 for 2 colors and then my dad goes to me "you could have had the entire car touched up at the Honda dealer [where he works] for like $100." So you might want to check some dealers/paint shops to see what they'd charge.

 

There are people that do this. My friends wife had a business where they would go around to the dealers and touch up the dings and scratches on new cars. They ended up with something like 5000 little jars of touch up paint (he mixed it himself, each year, all colors, all cars).

The point being there are people that ride around all day and do this.
They are very talented and you can not tell it was touched up.

 

The question is how do you find them? I assume they'd be cheaper than taking it to a dealership. I know a guy that does really good paint work, but my dad's car has been on his to-do list for months and he's just too busy. My paint chips wouldn't have been worth his time.

 

I needed some wheel curbage touched up a while back on one of my cars, just did a Google search for "wheel repair Houston" and it came back with dozens. I'm sure if you did something similar like "paint touchup/repair Pittsburgh" you would find some local businesses. Big cities almost always have folks that do specialty repairs.

 

I purchased a Langka kit and a small bottle of touch-up paint from the dealer over a year ago. Have done touch-up repairs twice on chips on the bonnett and bunper and am very satisfied with the results. Bigger chips took 2 applications to fill the divits but from 2' away you cant even see where I have done the repairs. If the sun hits it just right you can see imperfections but color wise its perfect. Very satisfied with my results.