First off....if you guys don't want this post here, please feel free to move it to another forum. Thought it made the most sense here. Generally speaking, the paint on MINI's is good quality compared to other cars I've owned so this might not be a big deal for owners. That said, the 2008 Subaru WRX STI I owned and just sold had terrible paint...first year of the new water-based paint under the new EPA regulations. Tons of paint chips....front, rear, side, everywhere. There was a TSB from Subaru on repairing the paint on the rear fenders...it involved adjusting the doors outward to protect the exposed edge, repaint and then a large area of clear bra compared to the small stock one. I tried several times to get local dealers to address this but they all ut: when I pointed out the issues, saying 'first we've heard of it!'. Yeah, right. here's a pic of the rear fender area - its a bad pic with a blackberry and while it was raining but you can see the dozens of rock chips I decided to forego the manfacturer-covered repaint of the car and do a DIY fix....figured worst case, I'd fight with Subaru of America if it didn't turn out well. A resprayed car is worth less (even if done under warranty), right? On to the info....ran across a random comment on a Subaru forum about a guy that used a repair kit from DrColorChip.com. Did some reading and seemed to be legit. I ordered the 'large' size kit, color-matched with my OEM paint code. I ordered the large b/c I had a ton of chips. The 'medium' kit would have been plenty. Think I spent $63. The kit comes with excellent and detailed instructions. You start with a clean car (duh). The kit comes with the color-matched paint, an acrylic. It comes with a milky 'blending' solution, an applicator cloth, a nitrile globe, a microfiber towel and several excellent detail brushes in different sizes. For large areas, you're supposed to smear the paint on with the nitrile glove. For small areas, the brushes are better. It cures pretty quickly....15-20. Best results say 30-120 minutes before using the blending solution. The blending solution is a solvent that's safe for the OEM paint....it removes the excess acrylic. The idea is to fill the chips then gently let the solvent bring the new paint down to the level of the OEM paint. The acrylic fully cures within 24 hours at which point the solvent is useless so be sure to 'blend' everything you applied (I found a few spots I forgot...there were SO many!). It works and it works fantastically! I was concerned with my car as red is the hardest color to match as it oxidizes and its clear when red cars have been repainted. When looking VERY closely, one can tell there were chips that were filled but you have to be looking for it. This product passes the 'five foot test' and I'd even venture to say the 'one foot test'.... Here's the result: I traded my car in on a new Mercedes at the local dealer. They were very happy with the condition of the car, remarking 'this is one clean Subaru....'. I got $25500 for a car I paid $28300 for 18 mos and 20k miles before. I KNOW it would have been far less had the rock chips been evident or had the car been resprayed. I've recently ordered two additional kits....one for the new Benz and one for the wife's new pearl white Infiniti - it had a few tiny chips from a 1500 mile road trip we did in July. Overall, I give this product an A++!! Money and time well spent....clearly I had a solid return on my investment of $60 odd dollars and a couple of hours time. Hope this info is useful to
Works great on my space blue, color match is perfect, give it an A+ too. Note for deep chips it may take a few applications to fill.
Never used it on my cars, but I have done it for folks that bought the product, but were afraid to do it themselves. Nothing better then having someones else's paint to learn on It did seem to work well, but I've not done any dark colours yet. Mark
Also PGT, how did you address those filled-in chips that were inadvertently forgotten about when leveling? Fine sand then polish?
my wife's FX35 is a metallic pearl white. it does ok....I'll have to have another look as its now had a few days to cure. for the few spots I forgot, I had a can of Eastwood's PRE - it's a pre-paint prep spray. That and a bit of elbow grease with a microfiber and I was able to bring it down. Once the car was done, I waxed it and buffed it before going out car shopping. Frankly, I spent more time tending to the car in the last week of ownership than I did the entire 18 mos combined :lol: I know that's sacrilege here in this forum but with a new job and 2yo at home, there were more important things.
Good stuff. Congrats on the excellent trade value and your new wheels! I've been a Langka fan for a couple of years - nice to see a good writeup on this alternative. I gotta do a full detail on our 2001 Town and Country this weekend, with some PDR and paint touch-up and polishing out a lot of defects, to prep for trading in the next week or so. Ugh. There is no joy in prepping a car to go away. Necessary evil, I guess.
Definitely no fun in sell prep, but if you want top dollar...... PDR can be very effective, but often interior panels must be removed to get to the backside of the sheet metal. So, evaluate the backside of the dings and just take it apart as needed calmly, before you even get to the PDR guy.
This stuff......? Select product. - Dr. ColorChip: Automotive Paint Chip Repair Systems It's been on my wish list for a bit. Just never had the nerve to try it out before, now I do.
Do you think this would work where I have a blister in the paint? On my 4Runner there's a spot that has a small blister coming thru, about the size of a pencil erasor. I was going to sand it down and spray with some off the shelf matching color (black). Would this be a better bet or is it primarily for chips?
a blister is generally from rust. break it open, treat the rust, then use this stuff to fill. should come out better than rattle canning it.
you need your OEM color code from the door jamb. I've ordered two kits that they didn't have listed (my STI was one) and they matched it. Just because its not listed doesn't mean they can't do it.