Let's face it, every car has stone chips. Those ugly white dots that seem to jump out on any colour of car and are impossible to ignore. The longer you have your car, the more that accumulate until there's dots everywhere that marr your otherwise perfect car.
The most common method was to touch up each chip with the big and ugly brush that came from the dealership in the little bottle. It always left an paint blob that was almost as worse as the orignal stone chip. Even if you used a different brush (like the fine art brush I used to use), it would simply take forever to do even a small area. A whole hood would take more than a day to do if you were lucky... probably more like a whole weekend in reality.
Well, those days are gone now since TouchUp 123 has now been introduced. Gone are the blobs, the messing around with bottles of paint and trying to get the job done without spending days doing it. With TouchUp 123, it's exactly as the name says... touch ups are as easy as 123!
My pride and joy is a 1999 New Beetle and I take extremely good care of it. Yes, it has paint chips like every other car on the road and maybe it's the brilliant techno blue colour but I can see all of the chips that dot my hood, fenders and around the wheels. In fact, if I wax my car, it makes it 10 times worse as the white wax gets into the chips and makes them stand out even more. Simply put... I love my car but hate the way the paint chips look on it
My hood had actually become so bad that I went to a couple of autobody shops to see if they could fix the chips. Here's what
I was given as an estimate from both.
Garage #1: Offered to sand and repaint my hood and sides for $1200.00 Canadian. They said too many paint chips made it
impossible to fix without a complete sanding and repaint.Garage #2: Claimed they could buff out all the paint chips with an aggresive compound and polish for $400 Canadian. Would
only do the hood though, all other areas were extra.TouchUp 123: Now, for the grand total of $34.99 (which is approx. $45.00 Canadian, which included shipping), I ordered the TouchUp 123 Individual Kit. It includes the ColorFill (matched to your car's exact paint code, which you indicate when ordering), the Final Touch Compound and all the materials you'll need to get your vehicle looking like new in no time. After getting the first two quotes, I figured $45.00 Canadian is no risk at all and was willing to give it a try.Shipping was fast and came to my door within no time (including getting across the border, which can be tricky).
TouchUp 123 can simply be described as child's play, which is pretty much saying that my 7 year old niece could use this stuff with no problems at all. You don't need prior painting experience or body repair knowledge at all, it's foolproof with this stuff.
1). After washing your car clean, use the Final Touch Compound (FTC) on a small area at a time with the prep towel. It goes
on easy and when you rub and is actually removing the wax embedded in my paint chips (turning them from white to dark).
2). Using a small dab of the ColorFill on one of the towels, you rub it into the chips that were just cleaned. The ColorFill is real paint and just like the little bottles you get from your dealer, it dries pretty quickly. Therefore, it's recommended you do little areas at a time (to properly fill in all the chips). If you do an area of 2" x 2", that is enough paint and room to ensure that you will fill in all the chips properly without the ColorFill drying too fast.
3). After rubbing in the chips with the ColorFill, you then use another towel with some FTC on it to remove the excess ColorFill from your vehicle's surface. You'll notice the paint chips that you just filled in are staying that way... filled
in. The FTC removes the excess but simply rubs over the filled paint chip. After this, just use another towel to rub off any
excess FTC and polish it up. Instantly, you'll see your paint shine and feel really glossy/silky. Just continue to do small
areas until you are done the section you are working on. Literally, you can do a whole hood in under 1 hour and that's after taking time to admire your car along the way too
At the end of the day, the question remains: Does the product actually work? Well, in one word, yes! It works better than I
ever anticipated and I was hoping for a miracle too. A lot of products guarantee you things but this one really does deliver. It doesn't promise anything but filling in your paint chips, and it does that extremely well. That being said, it won't fill in deep scratches or cuts in your paint, for that you will need some manufacturer's paint and the Glob Doctor, another product by TouchUp 123 which will literally melt down the excess paint blob until it's flush with the surrounding paint.
TouchUp 123 doesn't promise your car a perfect finish like a new paint job, but it will fill in your paint chips with ease
and that's exactly what it's supposed to do.
I've included some pictures below to show what the product did for my car. I have no need to manipulate these in any way... I
just wanted to show how all the ugly little dots of white were filled in with my car's own paint colour, leaving nothing but
a great finish. The first pic is my car (not bad for a 1999 from far away), the next four are the before & after pics (two of my back wheel and two of my front bumper). Please note, in the pictures, a couple of bigger scratches are present... those I will have to deal with using my OEM paint and the Glob Doctor (a project for next week!!!).
Bottom line about TouchUp 123: It's probably the best product under $50 you'll ever spend on your car's finish. It works,
it's affordable and it does what it claims. Why spend needless money at an autobody shop making your car's finish look great
when you can actually do it yourself? I saved anywhere from $350 to $1150 (depending on the garage I got my quotes from) and that's the difference with this product... you keep your money in the end.
Pros: Very affordable, extremely easy to use, enough product to do many different areas of your car (and have product left
over for future use) and actually fun to use.
Cons: None, except for the fact I wish I used this a few years ago!
Review Rating:
out of 5
