To touch her up or not to touch her up!

Had a go today with the dealer provided paint stick and got the bare metal covered at least. Not a great job but fortunately being white you have to know where you are looking to see where the chip is/was. So fiddly to do with the size of the chip but what can you do.

Depending how big...When it has cured a bit, you can polish over it to make it smoother, if you were a bit heavy handed, works best if you polish with a machine rather than a cloth, sometimes the touch up sticks have a polishing section on the cap for doing this.

Thanks, I'm a bit of an amateur when it comes to cleaning the car. What would be a good off the shelf polish I could use?

Thanks to posts on here I am now snow foaming (hadn't previously heard of that), using microfibre cloths etc but so far I haven't given it a polish.

Theres a whole world of polishes, but Autoglym Super resin polish is a good hand polish, ive used it for years... even before "detailing" was around! Best to seal (Autoglym extra gloss protection) or a good wax after polishing, or you could head into more specialist gTechniq, they do polish "P1" follow it up with C1+ or C2, although ive no experience of these... yet!

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I'm currently running Dodo Juice Supernatural Hybrid Wax having used tar remover and Autoglym SRP after the winter, wont have the longevity of gTechniq, but a damn fine wax and the shine was amazing when done!

(11-07-2012 06:41pm)tintin_57 Wrote:  Thanks, I'm a bit of an amateur when it comes to cleaning the car. What would be a good off the shelf polish I could use?

Thanks to posts on here I am now snow foaming (hadn't previously heard of that), using microfibre cloths etc but so far I haven't given it a polish.

Gtechniq really are incredible products - you can use P1 to polish then apply C1.5 as a sealant/protector for an amazing shine and beading. Drop me a PM if you're interested and I can get you in touch with Rob Earle who runs Gtechniq for a discount. Their G-Wash car shampoo and W2 all purpose cleaner are excellent too.

I've only used Chips Away once and they were useless, YMMV.

The problem with touch up sticks is that the brushes are far too big and the paint too viscous. I use small artists brushes - the smallest you can find - and I warm the paint in a mug of hot water to help it flow. Even then, I use a glass jar lid as a palette to mix the paint and a touch of thinners to allow the paint to flow into the cleaned and degreased chip.

...and now another small one on the lip of the bonnet has appeared. Again, down to the metal. Out with the paint stick again. Is it that the paint is just not that good and is more prone to chips, or have I really not paid as much attention to this sort of thing before?