When and Why To Use Touch Up Paint on Your Car

Automobiles are a common aspect of adult life, and many millions of Americans own a car or pickup truck. This is also a big responsibility, and a person should of course take good care of their automobile whenever it needs maintenance or tuning. This ranges from the tire pressure to the headlights to cleaning the interior, and the car’s body may need some work too, such as touch up paint. A paint touch up kit can help any do-it-yourself car owner to fix their car’s paint job in an afflicted area, such as Dodge touch up paint for someone’s Dodge pickup truck. Dodge touch up paint is one such brand that a consumer may use; Audi touch up paint or GMC touch up paint may be used on different cars, and there are some general strategies that a car owner should use when applying such paint to their vehicle. What is there to know about Dodge touch up paint?

Cars and Paint Jobs

Every car that comes off the assembly line will be ready for use, and this includes its cosmetic coat of paint. This is not just a color; the paint job and its finish will also protect the car’s body from harm, but the paint itself may need protection, too. Many colors are available, but the industry officially recognizes white, gray, black, and silver and the neutral colors, and according to a color marketing specialist named Nancy Lockhart, white has stood as the most popular car color in North America ever since 2006. But sometimes, paint may suffer damage on a car, and there exists a scale to measure the extent of the damage. Level 1A is for the mildest cases, and classes 1B, 2, and 3 follow, with class 4 describing the most serious car paint damage. This where Dodge touch up paint or other paint brands may be useful.

What is damaging car paint? Over time, car paint may wear out on its own anyway, but trauma can damage the paint much faster on certain parts of the car. In some cases, heavy tree branches may fall on a car, such as during a storm, and the tree’s branches may scratch the paint. Similarly, heavy hail or wind-blown debris during a tornado or hurricane may scratch and dent the car, and sometimes, vandalism is at work. Some people choose to “key” a car; that is, drag a key along a car’s paint job to deliberately scratch it, and this damage also calls for Dodge touch up paint for a pickup truck, for example, or Nissan car touch up paint.

Putting on the Paint

Touching up refers to how some small afflicted areas of the car’s paint job need to be fixed, rather than overhauling the entire coat. If a person has the skills to touch up the car paint alone, they can first find out the car color’s exact code so that they buy the right paint for the job. This means opening the hood and looking at the barrier between the engine and passenger compartments to find the sticker that will explain the paint’s particular code. The owner can use this information to buy the paint online, and once it arrives, the work starts. The owner can sand off the afflicted area and put down primer, and once that dries, the owner puts on a few layers of paint and allows that to dry, too, over the course of one or two days. Once the sealant is put on over that, the job is done.

Some car owners may not have the skills for this, however, so instead they will take their car to a local dealer and ask for a touch up paint job from the crew there. The cost of this may vary based on the extent of the damage and where on the car the crews will paint; it could range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, but in some cases, very minor touch up paint jobs might even be free. The car owner may also provide the paint color code to the workers so that they can make the coat of paint consistent.