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Help Desk
TouchUpDirect Mailbag the 3rd
We’re digging deep into this seemingly never ending mailbag to answer more of your fascinating questions!
How Does the Matching Process Work?
It’s not enough to go “Hey. My car is blue. I’m going to touch up my car with blue paint.” Each automotive brand has their own fun shades of blue like Ford Blue Flame Metallic or the BMW Yas Marina. How do you keep track of all these different colors? Each shade is attached to a color code. Your color code should be located somewhere on your car. Before you order, find your color code. This is the best way of making sure that you will end up with a shade of paint that matches your original color.
Once we have your code, we enter the information into the color code database to find out which colors we need to mix. With the formula for your color in hand, our paint technicians head to the mixing stage and bring your touch up paint to life. If you want to know more about the behind the scenes process behind your touch up paint, check out our factory walkthrough!
Do Automatic Car Washes Scratch Cars With Dark Paint?
Well, yes. But here’s the thing…automatic car washes can scratch cars regardless of how light or dark the paint on it is. The issue is this: brushes and flaps pick up all sorts of debris from the cars that they are washing. So car after car is getting grit crushed into their paint job as they go through the car wash. This can cause chips and scratches. We recommend paying a little more for a hand wash to keep your car in its best condition. And if you want to do it yourself, here’s some tips. We recommend hand cleaning with a microfiber cloth and a wash mitt, used with separate buckets: a soap and water bucket to clean and a water bucket to wash out the debris from your cleaning tool.
What Are the Benefits of Water-Based Car Paint?
We get a lot of questions about the nail polish-like texture of waterborne paint. Because of environmental laws, waterborne paint is the norm in the automotive industry. It produces much lower VOC than urethane or solvent based paints. It’s great for the environment but is it any good as a paint?
Absolutely.
In addition to being environmentally friendly, waterborne paint allows for better color matching, increased depth of color, and a wider range of colors. And with a multi-step paint process with the Primer and Clearcoat, With the Primer and Clearcoat doing the heavy lifting, the Colorcoat doesn’t have to worry about things like corrosion or protection from outside forces. It can just focus on creating an incredible and vibrant color.
What Applicator Is Best for Chips?
Sometimes it’s not big scratches or gouges that need to be fixed. You know what we’re talking about. Those little paint chips and nicks just taunting you from your near perfect paint job. We’ve got your back on this. Let us introduce you to our little buddy with the chiseled nib tip: The Pen. That nib tip is specially designed to give the user an incredible amount of control over their paint. And that makes it perfect for handling paint chips. Your car gathers these little blemishes over the course of its day so having a touch up Pen on hand is just good sense.
Does Repainting a Car a Different Color Decrease Its Value?
Yes, especially if it’s patchy or badly done, but that shouldn’t dissuade you from doing it if you really want to. Intention is important here. What if you want your car to be clad in your favorite color? If it’s a car you intend to keep forever, go crazy. But if you’re going to sell it someday, maybe look into wrapping. That way, the original paint job will still be intact under the wrap when you’re ready to sell. But what if it’s all about the resale? Many car collectors do repaints to restore vintage vehicles. If this is your situation, we would suggest using the same color. Having that classic color is a big deal for many of the people you are aiming to sell to.
