I had several old airbrushes from my model railroading days, so when I had my bumper off this weekend for the final work on the foglamps, I decided to experiment to see how effective an airbrush would be in touching up the several scrapes and chips on the bumper, most of them resulting from a minor fender bender when some ass backed into me in a parking lot last winter.

The results were phenomenal, far better than using the touch up paint and brush. I poured the stock Silverstone touch up paint into the airbrush spray bottle, thinned it about 50 percent with lacquer thinner, cleaned the areas to be painted thoroughly, then went to work.

The airbrush is a great tool for this kind of job, since you can apply many very fine coats over a very small area, blending it into the surrounding paint.

I now won't have to get my bumper repainted, as I was planning to do, so I've saved $500 - $700 with this less than $100 tool. BTW, I used my air supply tank from Lowe's to provide the air source for the job -- no compressor needed.

 

hey rick,
you think you could have a group touch up day at fall colors?

 

Hmmm... Rick, if you add a leather cover to the airbrush bottle, sounds like Rick's Accessories has yet another product to add to its stable for S2K enthusiasts!

 

So you could say, you were "Making love out of nothing at all"

 

So you just sprayed it on in several coats (how many?) and that was it? Did you do any clearcoats? Also did you do any wet sanding, rubbing compound, polishing compound, etc? I've seen this done at dealerships where the lead cars on car carriers would get rock chips during transport but I didn't hang around long enough to see what the next steps were. You didn't photo document this like you do with so many other neat things you do, did you?

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by xviper
[B]So you just sprayed it on in several coats (how many?) and that was it?

 

This could turn out to be a great do it yourself paint chip repair. Looking forward to hearing about the whole process. Might be good to put this in FAQ when you're done.

 

Rick,

How much overlapping did you do? I have two chips and a scratch I want to fix w/ out re-painting the bumper.

After the paint dried, did it blend well? Or did it stick up a little?

 

Rick,

Keep us posted on this. I would think some smoothing/blending would be required but you may get away without this additional step since the repair is on the bumper vs. on a more prominent area such as the hood. How difficult was it to remove the front bumper? Was it hours of work and difficult to get to all the fasteners? Someone on this site mentioned that they had realignment problems when reinstalling it.

 

The process to blend the paint is called "feathering," I think. You just spray gently around the area to be covered to blend in with the surrounding paint.

This is by no means a perfect solution, and close inspection will reveal that. But it blends in remarkably well, far better than the touch-up brush approach would. Once the area is polished, I think it will be almost indetectable from more than a foot or so away. The color match is near perfect (maybe I was lucky).

As littleton suggests, I wouldn't do this on the hood.