I used this product on my 2008 Mazdaspeed3 (the car I bought because BMW refuses to bring the delightful 1 series hatch here). The car is black and naturally below the black paint is a lighter colored primer (why do they DO this?) Because the car has over 30k miles driven in Houston it has stone chips a-plenty! It's a damn shame to look at a 2 year old car and cringe because of the way it looks (and I try to avoid situations that are guaranteed to get you peppered with road debris). None the less our test vehicle is peppered indeed and so out of desperation, I ordered a Dr.Colorchip kit in Mazda's color for a metal-flake black. The folks at Dr.Colorchip say they make your paint up when you order it and I believe it -everything in the kit was fresh and it arrived in a timely manner. Being as I'm writing about a black car, this may not mean much, but the color match was spot on. The kit has everything you need to fix stone chips, but I have a few suggestions to help the "fence sitters" along (I was one until I finally couldn't stand the way my car looked,and bit the bullet). Before colorchipping your car be sure you have plenty of paper towels handy and I recommend going to the auto parts store and getting a small bottle of acetone to help with clean up. BTW, I got my acetone at O'Reilly's and it was relatively cheap. Start off by cleaning the area to be repaired with rubbing alcohol to remove any wax that might mess with adhesion of touch up paint.Dr.Colorchip recommends using the enclosed brush to Dab, then smear, wait about 2-5 minutes and then blend in the repairs with their prefast solution. They enclose a glove to wear while doing all this dabbing but I abandoned it right away and simply used my fingers to do the smearing - much easier and you can get a "feel" for what you are doing. The acetone and paper towels help clean up your fingers and the little paint brush enclosed with the kit. The supplied paint dries VERY fast so don't plan on doing any more than 2 or 3 chips at a time - I found that after dabbing and smearing 3 chips, the paint on the brush was beginning to thicken and I was near running out of fingers any way, so I stopped at 3 chips per run. After dapping and smearing go clean the dabbing brush and your fingers up to prepare for the next round. By the time your are done with the clean up it's time to prefast the smeared paint off. I cut a tee shirt up into 4 inch by 4 inch squares and using the prefast solution on them I gently let the shirt material and prefast solution cut the paint off the surrounding area and then polished the area with the kit enclosed microfiber towel. Dr.Colorchip says the prefast solution polishes down to an amazing shine and they are not kidding. After dabbing and smearing and prefasting for about 3 hours the front of my car looks great - she's all black again and shiny to boot!!! Now. this product colors in chips but doesn't really fill them in. In my case the color match was perfect but you can look and see where the paint is not level. If someone was inclined to work with the kit a while, they may be able to completely fill a chip in, but I just don't have time for all that; I am completely satisfied with the product as the front of the car looks much, much better than it did before. I even have enough of the kit left for upcoming chips that are sure to develop as the miles pile up. One note about the acetone though, it is highly corrosive to auto paint so I was sure to have the finger and brush cleaning operation way away from the car itself - WE DON'T WANT TO HAVE AN ACCIDENT WITH THAT STUFF! I realize that all this is worthless without pictures but quite frankly, I was sort of scared silly doing this for the first time (remember the part about fence sitting) and I didn't want to be screwing around with a camera while trying to get a grip on what the hell I was doing. So there you have it - a Dr.Colorchip review and a satisfied customer. This company advertises in Roundel all the time meaning they support our car club. I am happy to report their product did very well for me and I recommend it. Sorry for the too long post. Cheers!
I've used it on my 01 M5, 03 330i, and 01 S4. The darker color paints really benefit from DCC, but with silver on the S4, it was easier to see the filled in chips. I bought their road rash kit (just more product included), and it REALLY helped the front of the M5 and ZHP. I later cleaned up the areas behind the front tires on the M5 and took some pictures. For rash, you use a soft t-shirt piece and just smear a large amount of the DCC paint across the whole surface. Let dry and then use their solution to gently take off the excess. The M5 had a fair amount of rash behind the front tires since I'm running 9.5"/275s all around plus lots of R-comp tire rock-throw-up chips, etc. I've found it best to do this in daylight to really see well, so I took the cars out of the garage to do all the work. In the pictures, the sun had gone behind the clouds by the time my wife and I were done, but you can still see the huge improvement it made. 1st view: With DCC paint smeared over surface: Results:
A neat 'tutorial', 327350. And Chuck, your photos are great. I had pretty extensive experience using the Dr. Colorchip system on two Lexi...one maroon, the other royal blue. This was three years ago. As a pretty 'anal' touchup person, I did three applications, to raise the chipped areas to the level of the surrounding paint. The results were nothing short of amazing! Even put an invisible bra on the front end of one of the cars, and the former depressions and chips were, in fact, invisible. Coward that I am, I used my own gloves, but I'm also a fan of the acetone use for cleanup. It's a really fine product/system, IMHO. Don
You guys have touched on the few points that concern me! I would like to fill in road rash but also those chips so the dried wax doesn't shine oh so bright on my black car! I initially thought the Langka blob remover would be better but heard that it slightly discolors the paint. If it really takes three tries and the chip is filled in... Well what do you guys recommend? multi applications to fill it in with Dr Color? I really cannot stand the terrible chips that always collect some wax!
The tried & true way to fix a paint chip is to build up the paint level in several applications to come level with the surrounding area. Do it correctly & be happy, or be ready to do it over. http://carcareonline.com/viewarticle.aspx?art=8
About to try DCC Do you have to take the recent wax off first? How soon after can you wax? If there is a spec of rust in the rash, do you have to clean it out first, too? My problem is road rash on the hood and front end.
Hey all. I am a new member, and thought I would chime in a bit. I used Dr. Colorchip on the front of my M3, and it worked great. I was pretty liberal with smearing it on, and for a long while it just looked so much better. Although I waxed after a few days, the effect hasn't lasted quite as I would have liked. But I have a feeling that it might have been part of how much I was putting on. I also ran out of their "wiping" solution as well. With a more tender hand I betcha this stuff would look even better. The front of my car was very rashed. If you have just a few chips Dr. Colorchip is perfect.
RSDeuce, The company will sell you more of the 'wipe-on' solution. Second application will make you pretty happy, I'll bet! Don
