MicroFinish Paint Repairs; Part 1
On July 4th 2001 my wife and I went down to our local Chevrolet dealer and drove home in a new 201 ZO6 Corvette. It was the must have Millennium Yellow 6 speed with all the options. For the first few years it was my daily driver and I loved every mile I put on it. For the past few years it has logged approximately 500 to 750 miles a year and now registers just over 55,000 miles. It has always been garaged and taken care of as much as a regular driver can be. There have been the normal amount of rock chips and other minor road rash scars.
One such battle scar really caused me some irritation. It was a rocker panel scrap over a foot long that was the result of the car riding low and a square face concrete parking lot curb that reached out and tore the paint right off! It was hardly visible to most but to me it was as bad as a pimple on the tip of your nose.
I was bothered by it but did not want to send the car to a body shop for a week and who knows at what cost to repair such minor damage. I am more than capable of making such a repair but never seemed to have the time and did not want to drag out all the necessary equipment for such a small job. I have seen and even used some of the old fashioned paint in a small bottle with a brush that looks like your wife’s nail polish. I have also used the small cans of “touch up paint” found on the racks of the local paint stores. My experience with those products has been far less than satisfactory.
I was recently introduced to MicroFinish LLC which is a custom aerosol and touch up paints company with a new twist. You can still get the little bottles of paint and spray cans but they also have paint pen! You can also get the hard to find matching paint for your 1969 Wimbledon White Mustang.
I decided to give it a try. First off I got two of everything to make sure there was no running out and I had plenty of product to test and play with. I got the paint pens and the aerosol cans. I got primer, color base and clear coat in my correct color.
Next up was the preparation of the damage. When I got the Corvette on the lift and took a good look at the scrape I soon realized I had more missing than paint. The scratched reached deep into the plastic cars rocker panel surface. Luckily I had all the right sand paper, a sanding block, body filler and primer. Within a very short time the rocker panel was smooth again and it was time to add some color.
However, before jumping into the spray can I wanted to see how well the paint pens worked and how well the paint matched. Let me just say I was shocked. Next up I will show you the process and results of the rock chip repairs and then the results of the rocker panel repair.
