My mom's 2002 ES300 has a few rock chips on the hood. I want to touch those up. I am thinking of having a clearbra installed on the front end after that. I have tried a couple of different approaches to using touch up paint (used a q-tip stick and then applied clear nail polish, etc). No matter what I do, it still looks obvious. Any ideas?

 

the idea behind touch-up paint is that you're actually filling the hole, not painting it. the trick, of course, is that the "hole" is very, very shallow - only the depth of the paint around it

if there's bare metal, prime first (and let dry). then using a toothpick, or if you can manage with the included brush, "lay" the paint in as thin as possible and let dry - do this as many times as it takes to reach the depth of surrounding paint.

The patch probably won't (can't) 100% exactly match surrouding color - that you'll just have to live with. But you can even the surface with some very fine wet/dry sandpaper - even glued to the end of an unsharpened pencil for really small spots . I think you can get touch-up clearcoat, too. And wax that surface real good before you put a bra or other over it, cause once installed the surface underneath probably won't get much attention.

 

I bought some black touch-up paint at Autozone and was amazed at how well it concealed the scratches and chips on my truck. I was able to completely conceal many of the chips and scratches. I did several on the hood, and I would have a hard time finding them now.

The touch-up paint is called Scratch Fix 2 in 1. I'm sure there is nothing special about the paint, but the bottle has a ball-point type applicator in addition to the brush that works real well on the chips and smaller scratches. For larger areas, the brush can be used, but it tends to be messy unless your very careful.

 

The key is matching the surface of the filled chip to the surface of the surrounding paint. After you carefully fill it in, you need to sand and then polish the spot until it is dead level. That is when they CAN disappear.

 

Here you go http://www.carcareonline.com/viewarticle.aspx?art=8

 

I've always used the torn off end of a paper match, but like the others said the idea is to fill the chip with several thin coats not fix it in one shot.

 

Thanks for the info and links guys!
I will give that a shot!

 

I asked about this a while ago and and Bob put up some links to some stuff called Langka.
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/show...ht=touch+paint
I was just covering some bare metal and putting a new bug guard on so I didn't use it but if I ever decide to touch up the rest of the truck I'm going to try it.

 

I've used electrical tape to mold around the scratch and then I use the touch-up. Less of a headache than trying to consistently get into the crevices.