Paint chip repair on black Boxster: LANGKA or Dr. Colorchip or other?
 

Hadn't even had the car a week and I'm already noticing paint chips on the hood of my 2.5 :(

What do you guys recommend to fix the chips? I searched the forums and it seems most of you recommend either Dr. Colorchip or LANGKA, has anyone used both on a dark painted car and can recommend one or the other? Or is there another solution I'm missing? Do both of those kits include paint that matches OEM?

It's not bad enough to repaint the hood but I would like to repair what few chips are there.

Here's a new photo I took today :)
http://i40.tinypic.com/35jdxqa.jpg

the chips don't show up in photos, thankfully by the time I down-size the photos they don't appear anymore, but anyone looking at the car would notice them

I like to try Dr. Colorchip for one of my cars as I have a ton of chips. But right now I just use the factory stuff and it is slow and hard.

I used the Dr. Colorship a few years ago, working on some quite small chips (smaller than match head-sized for the most part). It's really easy and does a reasonably good job. (If you look at all close, you can still see them...but they are definitely better than before, especially since the primer---which is what was showing previously---is stark white.) If you do a Search on "Dr Colorchip" and "Langka" (which I haven't tried), you'll get all kinds of hits.

Dr. Colorchip should be used with he understanding that it provides a good fix with a 36 inch rule.

Get closer than that and you'll see the repair.

It depends on how particular you are. If you are, then ger the hood shot and blended with your fenders.

Other than a repaint you are talking about some serious time and patience if you are going to tooth pick fill, sand, tooth pick again, sand, then buff. And if you have a black car you have to use a high speed buffer. Which means you have the possibility of burning the paint.

My car looks like it followed a gravel truck for last 5 years. :eek:

What a pain, and with a fine eye you can still pick it all out. :(

Yeah at a distance it looks good, but you and I know it is still there.

Sorry I don't think I have any pics of the chips before the fill.

couple more after a buff

It depends... I've used all the "solutions" out there so I can rank them for you based on my experience...

In terms of ease of application:
(1 easiest......5 hardest):

1 - Dr. Color Chip (doesn't last long - must apply after polishing or will pop out)
2 - ???
3 - Langka (best on flat surfaces only - will take some patience especially if deep but holds up surprisingly well)
4 - fill/sand/buff method as health outlined above (very effective but time consuming)
5 - professional respray (best, most durable but also most expensive)

In terms of durability:
(1 very poor/barely lasts a few car washes......5 effective)

see list above ;)

Ah St. Louis! I graduated from SIUE many years ago. I still enjoy coming back to town for visits and World Champion Cardinal games!

Enjoy your car.

OBTW, I use Dr. Colorchip on my Silver Box (also used it on Z4 with good results).

That last photo looks pretty decent, is that the finished result? I think I could live with that.

I'm already starting to figure out that photos of black cars can be horribly deceptive since photos of my car look pretty good but with in person you can see the "halo" rings of fine scratches in the paint, especially if you're looking at the reflection of a lightbulb in the paint.

I'm... pretty knowledgeable about wax. I started using Zaino in the late 90s on a maroon Beretta and became a big fan, but seeing how a full kit was $100+ I tried other brands over the years. I have two orbital buffers, a 8" and a 10", and a large assortment of different grades of cleaner wax, polish, carnauba wax, etc, you name it I have it.

Here's a photo of one of my shelves of wax (zaino is on a different shelf)
http://i39.tinypic.com/107m1l5.jpg

So the polishing and buffing I'm good on, it's the filling the paint chips I'm a bit :confused: about, especially with a black car where *everything* shows up.

You got that right! Black has always been a love hate affair with me.

I am still learning

I finally found out that it almost totally impossible to get a decent finish with a traditional store bought slow speed buffer unless you willing to spend a whole lot of time with it. Even then you may never get to the finish you want. They work good enough on light colored and metallic finishes but horrible on black if you want that mirror finish.

High speed buffer so far has been the only thing that works for me on black finishes. But it is also easy to burn the paint if not done properly :mad:

IMO, a proper fix is going to include shooting the entire hood, unless it's basalt metallic, being black might be your friend, it's got to be easier to blend in than other exotic colors.

No, you can definitely get a good finish from a "slow" speed buffer, it doesn't take thousands of RPMs to buff out minor scratches if you're using the right cleaner wax or polish, just have to find that perfect grit

the two black bottles in the photo are 3M machine polish. I've been spot testing all over the car my various cleaners/polishes and that did an amazing job by hand. Need to do more testing before going over the whole car but it looks promising so far. Tried some Meguiars medium cut cleaner (far left in photo) and that was way too harsh but the 3M buffed out the swirls.

I told wifey I promised not to buy anymore waxes until I used up some of the bottles I already have. If I find something that works as well as I remember Zanio working I'll post it here.

right, but I'd hate to have the hood shot for every new paint chip, it would be in the shop every few months if I did that.

I don't have the finesse or patience for slow speed buffer probably because I still don't know how to use it.

And as far as painting whole panels, chips are so small when it is a slightly different color it can still be hard to see, where if you do a whole panel and if it is just slightly off you notice it right away

In my opinion, I just wash my car with a dish soap (to remove all of the old wax), clay bar it, use a light cut polish (that i apply by hand), and then use turtle wax black box on it. It feels so extremely glossly, you can't see any more swirl marks, and the black box fills in all the chips on the car.

Looks great. I always put a clear wax over the black box too. Setting 3 layers of wax. Looks beautiful. Have fun, and for EVERYTHING it should cost you about $50-$90 depending on the quality of the top layer of wax and polish. $25 for a clay bar kit, $20 for a black box.

Try it!! LOVE IT!! lol

For whatever reason (not clean enough I suppose) I can never clay bar a black car correctly, and always get a stray long scratch that I later will have to spend a crap load of time on.

As for black box, we are lucky the boxer is so small, I would never be able to Black box a larger car.

That stuff is hard to buff off :(

Chip Repair
 

I had a nasty 1" scrape on the side of my Ruby Red Cayman (from dropping the hose) as well as a couple of minor chips on the hood. I tried Dr. Colorchip on it and was not happy. It didn't work on the scrape at all (not their fault, they don't claim it does) but it also didn't work very well on the hood, either. Ended up using factory touchup with "Qixx" (sp?) that I bought at an auto parts store and got beautiful results. I built up the scrape and chips by touching them up about three times until the touchup was higher than the surrounding paint (waiting a day in between) then let everything cure for a week. Then I took the extremely fine-grit sandpaper from the Qixx kit and glued it onto the eraser end of a new pencil. I then wet-sanded directly on the touchup until it brought the repair back down to the level of the paint (you want to be careful here that you aren't sanding your original paint, hence using the pencil). Then used the two kinds of polish in the Qixx kit and a fresh wax, and now you cannot see any of the previous damage unless you look for it and use a magnifying glass. No need for clear-coat although I guess you could. I have never used any kind of mechanical polisher on my car. This was obviously extremely time-consuming but I would just work on it for 15 minutes a day on weekdays after getting home from work, and it was totally complete in two weeks.

Anybody need Dr. Colorchip in "Ruby Red," I have some for sale cheap.