Thought I would write up my experience with a DIY paint chip repair, using basic materials from scratch repair kit and after-market paint pen. About 3 weeks after getting my new 2010 Audi S4 Meteor Gray, I was driving on Interstate and heard a loud pop on my driver door. I was sickened to see these scratches just in front of the driver's side mirror.



I couldn't leave it, and also couldn't swallow paying for expensive paint repair (having just paid for the car), so I decided to give a repair kit a try. Did alot of forum searches, and found that it was do-able, albeit not perfect. Not trying to sell these kits, but here's what I used. Paint from Expresspaint.com, and a Turtle wax repair kit (I wanted the nicer sand blocks and fine-tip clear coat pen).




Basically followed the directions in the kits. Wash and de-grease the chips. Apply primer to exposed metal. Apply your matched paint (I used toothpick and tiny brush. The little brush-stroke marks tend to disappear as it drys, but it still heaped up some). Then clear-coat (definetely heaped up by this point).

Once the clear-coat dries, you must sand it down level with the surrounding clear coat. Here is the leap of faith. You will end up sanding the surrounding clear-coat as well, thus scratching it all around the chips.



However, you use finer and finer grit sand-paper until the clear coat smooths out, then polish with clarifying compound. It takes quite a while to sand in circles and diagonals until your strokes disappear, but it does polish smooth.



Continued in next post

 

As you can see, the paint (or my technique) was not a perfect match, but you have to be looking closely to find the scratches. They really aren't noticeable unless you know where they are. Here are two other angles.





When I finished, the polish did nicely, though there are slight lumps at each site. I would say for locations not on the hood, this repair can do well. The blemishes are visible but look much better than a hideous chip. The hard part is deciding whether to risk making it worse, but with patience, you can get a decent result. Hope this helps if you are unfortunate enough to get a gash in your paint like mine.

 

So this is only visible at a sharp angle?

Have you had to do this on any other spots since then?

 

Rad, that looks pretty good. Have you had a chance to try Dr. Colorchip? Are the products you're displaying for sale in the USA?

 

I used the dr color chip and actually worked very well. seemed a lot easier too, but looks great

 

Could you provide some pics?

 

didn't take pics but will next time I next time I fix some.