An easy and effective way to repair small chips in auto paint
I try to keep our vehicles looking as good as possible for as long as possible. My kids know that this means long walks from the out-there-no-way-to-get-dinged parking spot to our destination. It means I spend a lot of my free time hand washing our cars, because I don't trust the automated variety. It means lots of vacuuming and leather cleaning and Windexing and who knows what else.
But the one thing that has—until recently—stumped me is repairing small chips in the paint. For years, I'd buy a bottle of the factory paint and a bottle of clear sealant, and do my best to dab, smooth, and seal. But the results were never very good—sure, the chip was covered, but you could still see exactly where it was—many of my cars have had repaired areas that looked something like this (though not quite this bad)…
While effective at preventing any further expansion of the chipped area, the results were far from pretty.
Then I read about Dr. ColorChip, and thought I'd give it a try. You can also buy their kits on Amazon, but I recommend using their web site, so you can make sure you get an exact color match. There are many similar systems out there, but this is the only one I've used1I didn't receive anything from them for writing this; I'm just a happy customer..)
Using their kit, here's a set of before-during-after pictures of a small chip repair on my car:
Compared to my prior method, the difference is astonishing. The fixed area is basically invisible from any distance, and there's no excess paint surrounding the fixed area.