ugh, i hurt my ride

[Jimbo]

ugh, i finally did it. I was parked on the side of a non-busy road and i had to turn around so i put it in reverse and turned the wheel to do a reverse 3 point turn. all of a sudden I hear "kkkkkkhhhhh" and i look and the front of my car had swung around and the bumper had scraped against a tree. A lot of crap had come off the tree and was on the car, so it looked a lot worse than it was (it was almost like a grass stain). When I washed it off this morning, there is a very small area that just has the paint chipped a little. how much is touch-up paint at the dealer? and are there any special ways to apply touch-up paint? Thanks,

james

[TJC]

My experience is that touchup paints is definitely not a cure for scratches excetera. Touch up paints usually don't match up very well at all either. Best thing to do is clean up the area as much as possible, perhaps with rubbing compound and clay bar and polish out as much of the scratches as possible. For the little chips or what have you that actually exposes the metal or clearly where the clearcoat has been scrapped off, use as little of the touchup paint as possible and do it in multiple coats only on the chip area and not going out of that. I don't remember how much my little bottle of touch up from the dealer was but I think it was somewhere between $5 & $10 bucks.

[2002GALANTes]

The touch-up paint is $6.00, i just bought some for my es, but haven't had a chance to put it on yet.