03 Ford Mustang multiple Paint chips - Help please

stangr

stangr

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Hello all
Well I got SPlASHED with rocks/pebbles from haing to follow a truck down the freeway that didn't have a cover on his load. I got around him and let him know what I thought - I'll leave the details out.
So now I have one big chip on my hood and multiple smaller ones. The biggest one went right down to the metal of the hood. The others went down to what appears to be a light colored primer.

I bought a Pint of color from PPG today. They filled three aerosol cans up for me and said I could bring back the rest to put in cans if necessary.
I took my car to them to match it because I have a Satin Silver Mettalic color paint job and they had three different versions of it.

They said that they sold me what the called a single stage paint. I know nothing about body work or painting. I bought a 3M kit as well to get the basics like sand paper, a chip sander pen?, a tool to hook up to your drill, backing pad, orange pad for using rubbing compound and a buffing pad. it came with some 1500grit paper. They said some thing about flaring it out a bit which I don't know how to do. They told me to use 600grit sandpaper. I know the big chip is going to need several coats to build up to the level of the rest of the paint in that spot.

If any one knows of a Step By Step method for doing this job I'd appreciate it very much. I would have gone to a paint shop but I'm on disability still and money isn't plentiful at the moment. I want to do the best I can with for now.
Thanks in advance to any one that can help me with this process.
 
You need to clean the area and feather edge the paint chip area to blend smoothly with the surrounding paint so that it is very gradually tapered instead of having a hard edge where the chip meets the rest of the surrounding paint. Then you fill the chip with a little paint, and wait for it to dry, and then repeat until you have the touch up paint just above the level of the surrounding paint. Then, after a few days, like 4 days, you sand the touched up area down to be perfectly flush with the surrounding area of paint, and you polish it to match.You Use the 600 grit to feather edge the paint at first, and then you use the 1500 when you sand the touch up paint down. I suggest you have some 2000 and 2500 grit too, and maybe some 3000, to eventually finish off the paint chip area to polish it to look like the rest before you use polishing compound to bring up the shine.
One more thing. When you do all this, the paint still won't match the surrounding paint perfectly. There will be a hairline border where the chip area meets the surrounding paint, and the little metallic flakes that are inside the chip area probably won't exactly match either. When the paint was first sprayed, all of the little metallic flakes align themselves in a specific pattern, so that they all are fairly evenly spaced apart because all of the paint was wet at the same time and dried at the same time. The orientation of the flakes will be determined by the distance the spray gun is from the panel, the pressure of the gun, the angle of the gun, how thick the paint is in it, ect. When you apply touch up paint by hand, it is impossible to get the flakes in the paint to lay down in exactly the same pattern as before. Because of this, if you look closely when you are done, the paint won't match exactly perfectly. The only way to have the paint match perfect again is to repaint the ENTIRE panel. (Of course, I mean, RESPRAY the entire panel.) Good luck to you.
 
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Blackthornone said:
You need to clean the area and feather edge the paint chip area to blend smoothly with the surrounding paint so that it is very gradually tapered instead of having a hard edge where the chip meets the rest of the surrrounding paint. Then you fill the chip with a little paint, and wait for it to dry, and then repeat until you have the touch up paint just above the level of the surrounding paint. Then, after a few days, like 4 days, you sand the touched up area down to be perfectly flush with the surrounding area of paint, and you polish it to match.You Use the 600 grit to feather edge the paint at first, and then you use the 1500 when you sand the touch up paint down. I suggest you have some 2000 and 2500 grit too, and maybe some 3000, to eventually finish off the paint chip area to polish it to look like the rest before you use polishing compound to bring up the shine.
One more thing. When you do all this, the paint still won't match the surrounding paint perfectly. There will be a hairline border where the chip area meets the surrounding paint, and the little metallic flakes that are inside the chip area probably won't exactly match either. When the paint was first sprayed, all of the little metallic flakes align themselves in a specific pattern, so that they all are fairly evenly spaced apart because all of the paint was wet at the same time and dried at the same time. The orientation of the flakes will be determined by the distance the spray gun is from the panel, the pressure of the gun, the angle of the gun, how thick the paint is in it, ect. When you apply touch up paint by hand, it is impossible to get the flakes in the paint to lay down in exactly the same pattern as before. Because of this, if you look closely when you are done, the paint won't match exactly perfectly. The only way to have the paint match perfect again is to repaint the ENTIRE panel. (Of course, I mean, RESPRAY the entire panel.) Good luck to you.
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Thanks for the reply. I'll just have to do my best for now and hope it comes out fairly good. If it doesn't, I'll have to save up some bucks and have it done by a shop. I hate driving it around like this. It's always looked so good before and of course this just had to happen right after I put a new front chin spoiler etc.. on - yikes !
 
Rsurfer said:
I almost got this kit, but decided to do it the old fashion way. I think any chip after filling, sanded and polished should be clear coated.
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I agree but i had a guy do a demo of the same type of kit used at my dealership and looked great.Well looked great then not sure how it would look in time.
 
Blackthornone is correct about the metallic flakes not spreading out evenly, thus causing an off color.
 
Rsurfer said:
I almost got this kit, but decided to do it the old fashion way. I think any chip after filling, sanded and polished should be clear coated.
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Yes, but only if the rest of the car is also clear coated. Otherwise, it won't match. In addition, if a car is clear coated, then the level of the color coat touch up must be BELOW the level of the top of the paint, and instead match the level of the rest of the color coat. Otherwise, it will look like there is a little mound of color in the paint.
 
Blackthornone said:
Yes, but only if the rest of the car is also clear coated. Otherwise, it won't match. In addition, if a car is clear coated, then the level of the color coat touch up must be BELOW the level of the top of the paint, and instead match the level of the rest of the color coat. Otherwise, it will look like there is a little mound of color in the paint.
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Yep, did that, srewed up, started over. The 3M kit I bought didn't go into detail about clear coat. Also, at first, I tried a Dupli-color kit and that was horrible. Then I found PPG/APS and they told me about the variations for my satin silver metalic paint. They are close but they took the colors out to my car and we were able to determine the exact match.
I have a larger area to cover - basically the whole lower part of the hood, left to right etc.. and the whole lower bumper all the way across. I really got blasted good. Looks like someone hit me with buck shot other than the big chip that went clear down to the metal on the hood. I'm going to try my best to fix this myself, and may end up taking it to a shop if I can't get it right. At least I won't have to pay them to sand it down etc..since I'll have that part taken care of. The people at PPG were telling me to do it differently than the 3M kit said. So that got me confused. My car does have a clear coat on it. I didn't by any clear this time around because of what happened last time with it building up and even wasn't clear. it added a darker color to it as well. That was the dupli-color kit I tried at first. The people at PPG said their clear coat is clear like water.

I'm going to start sanding tomorrow and sand the whole thing at once rather than just work on one chip at a time I guess since there's so many. MAN, this is a pain in the xxx. I'd rather work on my engine any time rather than work on paint problems like this. I've never had so many chips like this before in my life. I don't mind waxing etc... my car at all. But I sure don't like this problem. This is so screwed up I just hope I can get it to the point where it won't cost me as much to take it to a shop eventually when I have the bucks and have the whole front end re-painted/clear coated.

I read on 3M's website where they have a clear film that you can get put on your car that's like a clear hood protector/car bra. You just can't see it. Has anyone used that process ?
 
I have seen said clear bra on a Ferrari, and it looked ok. You could see it from 15 feet away, but it's a lot better than rock chips. You can see a subtle line where the bra meets the rest of the paint. It was crystal clear, however, with about as much gloss as the paint itself, maybe a little less.
Make sure you keep mixing the paint frequently when you are touching up the car to make sure the metallic is as evenly distributed in the paint as possible.
You need to do that to get the best match.
 
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