The last few days I've been working on trying to fix the paint chips on the electron blue C5Z, as it has accumulated quite a few of them in it's lifetime. I'm thinking I'm going to have to get the car repainted anyway because of the abuses inflicted upon it over the couple of years it was away from home, so this is the perfect opportunity for me to experiment and get some experience doing this kind of repair.
Currently I am working with the Dr. Colorchip repair system. I've got the front end of the car mostly done, but I'm going to have to go back to catch some small chips that I missed the first pass. But overall the paint job is looking a lot better as long as you don't get right up on it to take a close look. Right now instead of white colored chips in the paint, I have blue colored chips. The Dr. Colorchip product appears to be better suited to small shallow chips, as it just doesn't seem to fill in larger chips very well. So the larger the chip, the more noticeable it is, even after being colored in. So although the chips are colored to match the actual paint, there are still craters in the paint where the chips are located. They just aren't as easy to see now.
Perhaps heavier treatments with the product will fill them all in in multiple stages, but I'm thinking my strategy will be to use the Langka chip repair system (blob remover) with some touchup clearcoat. That way I can try to fill in the chip craters with the clearcoat, and use the Langka blob remover to smooth out the excess clear paint so that the craters are filled in and smoothed to match the surface around it. Theoretically, anyway. The point of doing it this way is to make sure the bottom of the chip craters are colored to match the paint, and then have the clear coat fill in so that hopefully it will leave a smoother finish that will look decent at even a close inspection.
I took a small video of one section I did with the Dr. Colorchip, but didn't turn out all that well as I didn't use enough light. Therefore the video is too grainy to be as useful as I had hoped. And I should have backed off more instead of trying to get a close up shot. Oh well. I may post it later on anyway.
But I did find a video on YouTube that shows both products and somewhat how they are used that should be instructive about what I am doing myself.
I didn't try the finger in the paint method shown in the video, as I instead painstakingly used a small brush to dab at all the small rock chips individually. But I think this method might work pretty well on the fender well lips where there is a lot of road rash. I would suggest using some sort of floor covering, though, as I think this could get pretty messy dabbing the paint like that.
So, I'll just have to see how this all turns out, I guess.
Rich, have you decided what color you're going to go with when you paint it or are you going to stay with the original color? I had thought about a black cherry color with mine, but mine had a red interior so it was either black, white, or some variety of red.
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I Have Noticed That A Lot Of People Demanding Free Stuff Are Not Wearing Work Boots.
Well, I really like the Electron Blue, but apparently not all "Electron Blues" are created equal, because I have seen some that I didn't care for the shade on a particular car. So apparently even trying to get the car painted the same color might have a risk of it not being exactly what I want attached to it.
I would consider another color if I could find one that I really liked, I suppose. Maybe a deep indigo metallic blue. I like the effect on the C6 Z06 we have with the Cyber Gray Metallic paint. It has flecks of blue in the paint that really looks nice in the sunlight. So I might be interested in a similar effect with the C5Z with some off color flecks in the paint.
Problem is, it's hard to tell what a particular color will really look like on the car just looking at paint samples online.
any high end paint shop, knows that there are different variations in the paint colors. normally 2-4 depending on how many different vehicles were painted with that specific color....
MOST of them, if the customer request for an EXACT repaint, will mix a small batch of the different variations and spray test panels, and then compare them to the factory paint. once they find a variation that is exact they then mix the entire batch for the car's paint.
IF you request a complete color change, you can request for them to spray test panels before the car is done for your approval. while this is not common, it may cost more due to the extra time to verify that the color is what you want, BUT how much extra is it worth to make sure the paint is exactly what you want the first time.....
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Life is hard. It's much harder when you're stupid.
Well, I really like the Electron Blue, but apparently not all "Electron Blues" are created equal, because I have seen some that I didn't care for the shade on a particular car. So apparently even trying to get the car painted the same color might have a risk of it not being exactly what I want attached to it.
I would consider another color if I could find one that I really liked, I suppose. Maybe a deep indigo metallic blue. I like the effect on the C6 Z06 we have with the Cyber Gray Metallic paint. It has flecks of blue in the paint that really looks nice in the sunlight. So I might be interested in a similar effect with the C5Z with some off color flecks in the paint.
Problem is, it's hard to tell what a particular color will really look like on the car just looking at paint samples online.
Agreed. I remember when Chevrolet intoduced the Marina Blue color. My cousin had a new 1967 327 Chevy II that he de-stroked to a 302. That was the first "hotrod" that I ever rode in. 4 speed with cheater slicks. Beautiful color. Another friend had a 69 Chevelle SS the same color. But I've seen variations of that color since then that didn't look right. Seems that when they went from lacquer to enamel and base coat/clear coat they lost something. Back in the 70's when I painted airplanes and cars the guy that mixed the paint (lacquer) showed me the formula book and told me that if he even changed the order that the colors were added, it made the paint come out a different color. And it's pretty amazing how they arrived at certain colors. For instance, the yellow color that was on 1967 Firebirds starts out with a black pigment. I don't even think you can get lacquer paint now. It was easy to paint with though.
I think the only way to choose a color is to see it on someone elses car and find out what it is.
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I Have Noticed That A Lot Of People Demanding Free Stuff Are Not Wearing Work Boots.
Yeah, but heck, even knowing the name of a particular paint probably won't do me much good, since there will be variations in just how it is mixed. And what are the chances that a paint project for this car won't turn out to be a fuster-cluck like the engine replacement was?
Well, been spending the last several days working with the Dr. Colorchip stuff, and it seems to do a pretty decent job on the rock chips painting them in so they aren't so visible. But the paint doesn't really FILL in the chips, just colors them so they don't stand out to the eye at a distance. And it appears that the color of the touchup paint is actually much darker than my original Electron Blue.
Perhaps more applications would eventually fill in the large chips, and perhaps this just works the way it is supposed to with VERY small ones.
And it really didn't help with the sanded down scratches at all, since it apparently wiped right off with the blending solution.
So I'm moving on to try out that Langka solution using clear coat to fill in the chips and use the Langka solution to remove the blob of clear coat paint that sits above the actual paint surface. Perhaps the Dr.Colorchip would work in the same manner if blobbed into the chips, but I want to have clear coat there to hopefully make the surface more uniform when I get to the point of polishing. This is all just one big experiment anyway, so I don't really know what is the best procedure to use with something like this. Hopefully I won't just ruin the paint and have to accelerate my plans for a complete repaint of the car.
Paint rock chip repairs
Hybrid Mode
