What I did with my Vette was too far with cans of spray paint. As I went through the car, I found more and more damage. Not my fault mind you, it's previous owner damage. I wish I still had an air compressor with a sprayer, cause I know that's the best system ever to repaint.

Anyway, I used three touch up spray paints. TouchUpDirect on the fenders, and PaintScratch on the bumper. I tried using local store bought Dupli-Color paint on the rear as well.

Here's a photo of the bumper+fender+hood, and you can see the difference. Mind you the car is dirty and the fender needs to be polished more. The hood is original paint for comparison. Another photo of the fender compared to the door. Here's the Dupli-Color BGM0398, which is said to be a close match. It isn't sanded here or polished. Here's another photo of the Dupli-Color over original

Anyway, I used Bright Red Dupli-Color paint as suggested by some other Corvette owners, as it was a close match to Torch Red. The can worked well, and matched perfectly. The second can was much darker, and didn't match at all, as you can see from the photos. You can forget about the Dupli-Color clear coat they sell in stores. Gasoline and other solvents makes quick work on that stuff. Also the base paint needs a lot of coats just to cover the area. I used primer on some of the areas and I could still see the primer. Needs at least 6 coats, which is a lot of paint. Gets expensive quick for cheap paint, on top of the paint being very inconsistent.



Then there's Paintscratch, which I used on the entire bumper. No complaints on the base paint, other then it feels like they give you so little. The clearcoat is amazing, but it needs a lot of time to dry, like at least a week. You can't overspray the clearcoat. I've literally poured on that stuff, and no runs. It also requires very little sanding and polishing to get a mirror shine. BTW, the clearcoat can be bought cheaper on if you just want it.

ToucUpDirect was cheaper, and they give you a lot more clear coat. The base paint is good, but can fool you in thinking you need to spray more. Paint looks uneven until you give it time to try, which isn't long. You will need a good 4 coats to cover up primer, but their 12oz can seems to give you more compared to what Paintscratch gives you. The clearcoat is in a larger can, but some reason the Paintscratch clearcoat seems to give you more when you use it. The TouchUpDirect clearcoat drys very quickly, but it hates sanding. It takes a lot of rubbing compound and polish to shine it like a mirror.

In the end I'd probably go with TouchUpDirect for the base paint, but with Paintscratch's clearcoat, which can be bought cheaper on Amazon. Though a lot of the damage on the fenders was around the wheel, where a lot of dirt and crap ripped the paint off. So in the future I'd probably invest in a clear coat like , which I know can take a beating. High price, and once you activate the paint you have a limited amount of time to use it. A pot life of 2 days. That's if you plan to do some serious repainting, and not just spots here and there.

 

Next time, Save up and leave it to the pro's.

 

Nice review of the three paint sources, but I'd have to agree on it would be best to pay the extra and get a pro job done.

 

the duplicolor does look like a good color match. I think you could let it dry then wetsand it with some 2000 grit. then polish with a buffer to get that gloss. Im experimenting with this now as Ive just had an accident but only have a small 1/2" x 2" chip on the side fender. I didn't want to pay my deductible for such a small area.

 

I know you guys say leave it to the pros, but a lot of that damage was done by the pros. The bumper was hanging off cause it wasn't attached at all underneath. It literally dragged on the ground and ripped off the paint. Why wasn't it attached? The radiator brace was all bent up and had bondo all over it. The inner fenders were missing huge chucks, and had to be replaced. As I removed the fenders I saw the repair work of the autobody. A lot of the paint literally flaked off from a garden hose. Rather then repairing the lower part of the fender, they just glued it to the body. The glue never broke, but the paint pulled right off. So the fender kinda stuck out a little.

I was probably better off taking it to a good auto body, but it started off small and just got bigger as I went along. I removed the bumper to replace the radiator brace, but then saw the inner fenders were damaged. So I removed the fender to get to the inner fenders and saw the fenders needed work too.

If anything it was a learning experience.

 

It probably would have looked alright if I did that, and was planning on doing it, but I had more TouchUpDirect paint come in, and just 220 crit sanded that area and put on their paint. A much better match.

Like I said, I did use the Dupli-Color paint and the first can was a perfect match. It's when I used the second can is when the paint got darker. Which tells me the paint they make isn't consistent in color. It can vary. BTW the touchupdirect clear coat doesn't react nicely to the Dupli-Color paint. It has rippled in a few spots. The Dupli-Color Professional clear coat from Amazon works perfectly with it though.

 

Just wanna add a fallow up to my review. The clear coat from Paintscratch is used only on my bumper, and birds have pooped on it. I haven't attended to the car in a while, and just left bird presents thinking that nothing could happen to my fresh paint. Mind you the fenders were also pooped on by birds as well, but they have touchupdirect clear coat.

The damage the poop did to the bumper was enough that I had to sand it with 1500 grit sand paper to clean it off. The clear coat literally ate away from the poop. It's fine now after some sanding and rubbing compound. The paint btw was done the summer before, so the paint sat in my garage for over a year before it was placed on the car. So it had plenty of time to dry.

If I had to go with anything at this point, TouchUpDirect is clearly superior in both base paint and clear coat. Which shocks me considering how many people praise PaintScratch. Also just wanna note, I found out that the clear coat TouchUpDirect is actually U-POL clear coat. I found this out cause I bought a cheap can to fix another car. Same sprayer, same smell, and even has the same problem with cheap Dupli-Color base paints. So essentially TouchUpDirect rebrands U-POL paint as their paint. Though I can with certain say the paint is nearly as strong as 2k type paints.

Bottom line is if you decide to do small touch up fixes, then go with TouchUpDirect, but save yourself some money and buy U-POL clear coat. If you're going for bigger projects then get yourself some 2k paint. One of these off Ebay is $27 - $30 and is a 2k paint. I've painted with this paint before but my local paint shop wants $70 - $100 for this. There's enough paint in that to do half a car mind you. Thanks to the power of the internet, the same paint can be had for far less. Which is why I feel stupid for doing what I did.




If you have an air compressor then you just need a sprayer and you're good to go. Maybe some paint thinner as well. If not then there's always the Preval Preval Spray Gun which you can get nearly anywhere like HomeDepot or Lowes for like $6.



But only use spray paint for touch up fixes. I would never again paint whole parts of a car with this paint. Too expensive to do myself, and the paint isn't even that good in quality. Though the TouchUpDirect or U-Pol paint does a fairly decent job.