When I bought my Camaro the car had a big scrape along the rear quarter passenger side. It scraped down to the metal at some spots. I also have a spot on my front bumper that has some paint flaking off. I accidently hit a curb when I was parking one time. I wanted to see if anybody could tell me if it is relativly easy to do some touch ups with touch up paint. And I also wanted to know how I would go about applying the paint and all that stuff. I am new when it comes to paint. I don't know much about it at all. I would post pics, but I haven't figured out how to yet. Thank you.

 

ttt

 

I bought a 3-step touchup paint kit + the paint at autozone I think. (I saw Sunset Orange Metallic and thought.. SCORE! Never thought they would have had it.) I think it's a duplicolor kit. 25$ for the kit + $5 for the paint, i think it was.

Anyways, it tells you how to use it. Everything was going pretty well for me until I went to apply the paint. The primer went on PERFECT but the paint was thick. Friend told me I should have mixed it with a little bit of paint thinner. So the end result turned out pretty damn sloppy for me. Also, I think I sanded it down too much because in two spots the paint is lighter than the rest. I guess I burned the paint? I'm not sure what happened. It sucks. I tried to make it perfect but I ****ed it up and it came out a lot worse than before. The color would have almost definitely matched better if I had known to thin it out. ****.

Looking back, I wish I had known the above. I would have also probably masked off around the work area so I wouldn't screw up the surrounding area.

I tihnk you basically clean off the scratch, apply putty (if it's really deep), apply primer, apply color, apply clearcoat with time inbetween each to dry, and sand smooth, buff clean everything.

scratch: http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/787/mvc681s9oh.jpg
applying primer: http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/8784/mvc567s5cw.jpg
appling color: http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/6592/mvc568s7dt.jpg
me screwing up and trying to fix mistakes: http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/3663/mvc575s2mk.jpg

As you can see in the last one, I screwed up a spot or two because the paint was so thick, ugh. But you can see how the right side (the big line across) was fixed up a good bit, and eventually that came out fine. But I was left with a bigger area messed up.

I don't have completed pics, but it looks clean except for where the thick touch-up paint was. It's darker than the rest and looks a bit raised. The closer you get the worse it looks. At some point i'll go at it again and do it right.

I hope that can help you avoid making mistakes.

 

Thank you. I will keep this stuff in mind when I do it.