Quote:
Originally Posted by picus
A few things.
1) BMW touch up doesn't match well. Ask me how I know?
2) The second picture is in the sun, it makes the existing paint look washed out because it is sand blasted, swirled, and generally a little tired looking.
3) The touch up is new, it looks like new paint, so it's like painting a new panel on a car with older paint. It won't match.
4) There is metallic in the paint, the metallic bits are sitting at a different direction than the OEM, which is helping to make it look darker.
5) Clearcoat will make it *darker*, that isn't what you want.
The way to make the chips disappear isn't easy, you need to sand them smooth then compound out the sanding marks. Additionally you need to compound the existing paint so it isn't swirled and doesn't look quite as sandblasted (although you can't get rid of that entirely, it's billions of tiny little indentations in the clear). Something like this:
http://www.autopia.org/forum/click-b...-56k-owie.html
Which, incidentally, was written by me. 
If you aren't confident about using sandpaper, please don't do it. I'm just trying to illustrate how to make the chips go away. |
Hi Picus,
Nice writeup. I don't know if you remember me but we had a few conversations on Autopia about E90 color selection a while back. You can take some credit in my final decision on going with Space Grey (vs. Crimson Red or Barbara Red).
Did you check out my picture thread in the photo gallery here?
Jason