bavariancowboy

Hello.

I purchased a CPO 2007 530i in May. I have enjoyed the car thus as a good middle ground between my old E36 328i and E38 750iL. I am into detailing which has lead me to conclude that the PO was not an expert at parking as there are plenty of scuffs.

To combat this, I got the touch up paint and clearcoat along with the BMW scuff remover (which includes the polishing paste and finishing paste). I am planning on following the steps below:

1) Clay to remove contaminants
2) BMW colourmatch touch up paint
3) BMW polisher applied by hand to remove brush strokes
4) BMW clear coat
5) BMW polisher for smooth surface
6) BMW finisher to restore gloss
7) Wax per usual

Do any of you have experience with the clear coat touch up? I know the polisher will blend the touch up paint so there are no blobs or brush strokes. Will this same work on the clear coat or will I need to do a light wet sand? I know this project will take some time so I took two days off of work. Thank you in advance for your thoughts and ideas.

tuffluck

if you are just touching up small chips, do not use the clear coat at all. in fact, if it's really small the touch-up paint will only make it stand out more. touch-up paint is tricky. usually you have to wetsand it down to the level of the surrounding paint after using to make it even remotely look similar. otherwise in a general sense i say not to use it. imagine a wall in your house and trying to color match it, but not getting it exactly right. it will be very obvious. even though the paint on your car has a formula and should be an exact match, they never ever are perfect. it is very easy to spot touch-up paint on a car.

5guy

Do NOT polish/wax after you clearcoat. I have gotten the paint and clearcoat from http://www.touchuppaintonline.com before and they matched well. The instructions said that clearcoat takes several weeks to completely solidify, so waxing or polishing right after won't be a good idea.

I am not sure if I agree with not using clearcoat, maybe you can try it for yourself on the inside of the trunk and test it out. But when I did it, just the paint itself looked a little dull and with the clearcoat, it matched almost perfectly. Test it and let us know

bavariancowboy

Thanks for letting me know of the longer clear coat dry time. I saw 2-12 hours for the paint. I will just do over night to be on the safe side. I'll keep you posted.

tuffluck

how big is the area? i would strongly advise against using clear coat. a small area will be completely unaffected by using clear coat. the result is that it will raise the area and need to be sanded down.

bavariancowboy

The areas are mostly quite small. The only exception is a spot above the wheel well. The BMW paint repair kit comes with the polisher which smooths out the surface. It also has thumbprint size sand paper for light wet sanding. I actually plan to do a test on another object so I have a good idea of what role each item plays before touching the car.