I noticed that on the nose of my car there are two very small places where the clearcoat is chipped. I want to fix this before it spreads. I haven't been able to find any clear touch up. I figured that would be the best thing to keep it from spreading. Any ideas?
-Josh

 

OEM paint then clear, you can get kits with OEM paint & clear at the dealership.

For the blobs of paint left by the touch up kit, look at:

www.langka.com

--- some good reading ---

"What They Don't Want You to Know: Langka = Lacquer Thinner"

I've got almost 2 dozen paint chips of various sizes on the sides and hood of my car, ranging from pinhead sized to almost 1/4". For the past couple weeks (while agonizing over sealant choices) I've been slowly filling them in with touch up paint. This wasn't easy because the only thing I could get anywhere was a pen type of applicator, which can only be described as a horribly imprecise dabbing instrument. After I finally got the hang of using it, I was left with lots of ugly, large paint blobs that I would have to knock down.

About 2 hours ago I was slaving over this mess with my pile of pencils with sandpaper glued to the erasers when I had realized something. Lacquer thinner will remove lacquer paint even if it's old and dried.

I'd discovered this yesterday as I was prepping my faded door moldings for spray bombing by sanding and degreasing with lacquer thinner on rags. The wierd thing was I discovered paint was coming off of one side. Lots of it. Then I could see that someone had previously repainted the molding already and the thinner was taking it ALL off, revealing the faded original factory paint underneath and unharmed.

I put down my pencils and tested my little theory. After a relatively short learning curve I was very happy with the results and all the time I saved. Granted this was a silver car, so I knew the colours wouldn't match perfectly. But the smoothness and eveness of the touch up was impressive. Better yet, I didn't have to use any abrasive!

There are a few simple keys to make this work.
-First, and very very important is to get a good material for putting the thinner on. You need somthing with virtually zero nap and is very smooth and even. I instantly reached for my green box of Kimwipes, which are a lint-free tissue paper commonly used by laboratories and electronic shops. These are ultra-thin, smooth, and have pretty much zero fibers or anything sticking out from the surface. Fibers sticking out will dig into the touchup paint, which you don't want to do.
-Second, you need a good hard backing for the tissue. I eventually used an angled butter knife because I wanted somthing small and controllable. I recommend metal because lacquer thinner is strong stuff and will melt quite a few plastics.
-Third, you need to learn how much thinner to use. It takes very little thinner for it to work. If you can see the thinner and it definitely looks wet, it's way too much and you'll have to wait for some to evaporate, which it does quickly. I used a small screwdriver to dab small amounts onto the tissue wrapped around the knife. If you use too much, you might knock the blob down too fast and take out too much, so start off easy.

Take the backed tissue lightly dampened with thinner and gently rub the paint blob. Check your progress frequently to see how much you're taking off and just stop whenever it looks and feels smooth and even.

With the exception of my custom-made enamel spray paint I used for the side moldings, this trick works because 99% of all store bought touchup paints are lacquers. Langka also says it will even out years-old paint blobs, just like what the lacquer thinner did on my moldings. I imagine Langka is just a safer or less volatile version of lacquer thinner.

I'm glad I discovered this because I was getting fed up with sanding and was seriously about to spend over $30 on Mother's version of Langka. Compare that to $3.53 for a 500mL can of thinner!

 

I don't know what you were going to buy for $30 but I bought the Mothers product for $10, works great.

Al