Molten Orange paint touch-up advice

[GravityKillsYou]

When I purchased my 2014 Molten Orange it had several paint chips that were touched up by the dealer. Most aren't too noticeable, but on the hood there is one long 2 inch scratch (dented from a rock I assume) that is horribly touched up. I have the two part touch up Ford kit, but it's pretty obvious that they tried it to no avail. It is raised up right now a good bit above the hood level as well. Should I sand it down and start over? If so, does anyone have any tips with either a.) making a leveler and application guide for the tri-coat or b.) mixing the different coats in different ways to get it closer to the final product, as opposed to the burnt orange looks that I am left with now. Any advice is appreciated.

 

[Bizzareo]

sub'd

 

[Meowoosh]

The second part adds gloss and stuff, which can lighten or darken the first part.

 

[Speedboosted]

I went to a local paint shop to get some touch-up. They grabbed the paint code and gave me a bottle of the base coat (some sort of red) and you can't tell at all that it doesn't perfectly match for just small chips. On something larger like you're describing, I would try to get the OEM base coat along with a pearl top to get more of a match.

 

[Tanaboon]

Do you have a picture of it?

Everything you will need to know about detailing, including paint touch up, can be found on the ammonyc YouTube channel. You can even email the guy and he'll respond!

There's more in depth ways to touch up chips that may look better that what the dealer did.

This isn't his channel since it's an old vid, but I highly recommend him. He details cars for movies, magazines, etc.

https://youtu.be/6xi3xmeO6C4

I would give you a tl;dw but I highly recommend watching this.

If that's not the kind of scratch you have, he has videos on virtually every kind of damage. Even bleach staining!!



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[apex1]

You might find that if you wet and it down with a block so you will be sanding mostly the raised touch-up paint, it will look better once it is leveled out. I'm not an expert but I would start with nothing more aggressive than maybe 1500 grit and just work the raised area, and finish with 2500 grit before polishing it out. Go slowly and see where it ends up. I have a small pneumatic polisher with a 3 inch pad I use on my bikes, and I have varying grits of polish that can be stepped down.

 

[GravityKillsYou]

The touch up the dealer did is with the two part pen, and whatever layering they did with the top coat made that base coat stick out to be the dark red that it comes out of the pen as. I tried going over it with just a light coat of the pearl but it did nothing. I plan on scraping the paint off since the job they did is all bubbled up and starting over. I am assuming a leveler on the base coat will help it hide some, but I am stuck on how much or how little of the pearl top coat to add.

I tried a practice run on some old metal and honestly can't get it that close either.

I'll check out the Youtube vids for now and post a picture when I get back home.

 

[GravityKillsYou]

So after a slight delay, here are the pics:

As with a lot of the tri-coats, it's hard to get paint details to show that well, but the touch up actually sticks out worse than what pic 1&3 show. Pic 2 shows the darkness and the raised edges that I don't necessarily like, and that I think make it more visible. So at this point, should I maybe try to sand down the edges level with the hood and then try more of the pearl coat on top of the red base coat? Thoughts?

 

[Tanaboon]

Hi, that definitely stands out =[.

I'm 100% only an amateur and I don't want to give any wrong advice. But here is my take.

The paint bubbling means it wasn't filled in correctly. It's just going to oxidize off if you sand it down and top coat it.

I would carefully sand it down to the stratus. Like 2000 grit glued on to a pencil eraser like Larry does. You want as much as the original paint on there as possible.

Clean the scratch well. Use alcohol and wipe it nice and clean once it's sanded down.

Do that technique where he waxes around the scratch so you don't get paint on the surrounding areas of your hood.

Mix the base with the top coat. About 50/50 is what he uses. Use a detailing stick and slowly fill it in. Use a heat gun and dry a layer. Fill it in again as needed. Dry, repeat, etc.

Once it's dry and about level, I'd sand it with about 3k or 5 k grit. Then polish over with a DA polisher.

Clean it with alcohol again to get rid of the polish that didn't blend. If you shine a light and still see imperfections, then polish it again.

This is what I would do if I DIY'd it. Because I'm an amateur, and the scratch is on the hood, I'd personally probably bite the bullet and go to a professional detailer only because the hood is such a noticeable part of the car.

Reflection of light off the paint/clear coat is how we see imperfections. So, sanding that down will definitely help. Light is reflecting off of that area differently because of how it's raised. That's why it's so noticeable.

I've fixed stuff like this near the bottom of my door panels which are inconspicuous spots to begin with. I've never fixed a scratch that big on my hood.

Good luck with everything. Again, I'm only an amateur/enthusiast, not a professional. I usually get my info from Larry's videos, Google, and /r/autodetailing.

I'd like to say I do a lot of homework. What I've come to learn is that getting a good clear coat blend is the hardest part.

Good luck with your hood!

Edit: not sure what pearl coat your using, but I'd use the coat that comes with the motorcraft touch up pen because it's oem.



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[GravityKillsYou]

The Ford touch up pen is what I have, so that's definitely what I am going to use. Where the previous "toucher-upper" put too much paint in the groove, I thought about scraping down the edges the best I could and just seeing what I have to work with. I don't think they mixed the two parts with that pen. That was my biggest question with the two part pen, was if you should mix any, and if so, how much (50/50 ish?). I don't know if you do that if you need to go back over with the pearl coat, or just mix them and leave it at that.

It's supposed to start warming up towards the end of the week so hopefully I'll get a chance to work on it soon.

 

[OrangeFiST]

Maybe just collect a few more rock dings, have the hood repainted and then wrapped with clear. I’m thinking of a partial wrap myself.

Maybe put a clever sticker over it?

My own personal experience is it gets worse every time I try something - like beating a dead horse to death, or a pink cat ring. Not being sarcastic.

 

[GravityKillsYou]

I didn't touch the car this weekend except to check the rear brakes (pads aren't grabbing the rotors evenly), but I did do about 4-5 mixes of the two part touch up paint from Ford in different ratios to see if I could get it closer. It does appear that if you do a mix it looks wayyy less red (obviously) than using the red with the pearl coat over it. I am thinking about doing the mix and using a leveler as a trial run on a bumper paint chip to see what that does.

 

[GravityKillsYou]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GEHoX_OCFBMLxX45zi6I4Ou5QVNXIRbN/view?usp=sharing

Sorry for the slightly crappy photo, but here is a picture of the "after" when I messed around with my scratch. You can see if you look closely in the picture that there are two places I touched up, with the one in the center of the picture being the larger one that was bubbled up with a crappy touch up job.

My method was to sand down the old paint to the bare metal with a really fine grit. I then did the wax trick that so many others talk about. I used approximately 1:3 ratio, with one part of the base with 3 parts of the top coat. In the future I might even go 4:1, as in direct sunlight it still looks just a little bit too dark (but way better than before). I mixed the paint up in a little plastic lid and used a fine detail applicator and applied 5-6 coats, letting each dry and level out as they went to slowly build back up to the hood level. Not the best job ever, but better than before for sure.

If anyone else has any better tips (especially mixing the paint with a leveler to help is smooth out on its own) I would love to hear them.

 

[Tanaboon]

I think this looks great!

I couldn't notice anything until you pointed it out.



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[CSM]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GEHoX_OCFBMLxX45zi6I4Ou5QVNXIRbN/view?usp=sharing

Sorry for the slightly crappy photo, but here is a picture of the "after" when I messed around with my scratch. You can see if you look closely in the picture that there are two places I touched up, with the one in the center of the picture being the larger one that was bubbled up with a crappy touch up job.

My method was to sand down the old paint to the bare metal with a really fine grit. I then did the wax trick that so many others talk about. I used approximately 1:3 ratio, with one part of the base with 3 parts of the top coat. In the future I might even go 4:1, as in direct sunlight it still looks just a little bit too dark (but way better than before). I mixed the paint up in a little plastic lid and used a fine detail applicator and applied 5-6 coats, letting each dry and level out as they went to slowly build back up to the hood level. Not the best job ever, but better than before for sure.

If anyone else has any better tips (especially mixing the paint with a leveler to help is smooth out on its own) I would love to hear them.

Bringing this back from the dead. I have a good bit of chips on my Molten Orange that I'm going to tackle.

How is your touch up holding up?
Any other molten orange owners want to chime in?