There are a few spots on my car that need some touch up paint. I tried a touch up paint that I brought from Auto Zone before, and it didn't match the factory black color of my Maxima. It was black, but you can tell it didn't match. So, where can I go to find a touch up paint that match my factory color exactly? Nissan dealer? I wish I have the money for a whole new paint job. My car is cover with so many little scratches, and swirl marks, even though you have to look close to see them, they are there. Drive me nuts how bad the Maxima's paint is.

 

I feel your pain. The Nissan paint seems to be thin! I wouldn't bother with the touch up paint. In most cases it will just make it worse. Unless you have a really good technique for applying it it will look lumpy. But if you do decide to get some you can pick some up at any body shop. I got mine from a collision repair place and it matched.

 

I bought my 2 bottles of touchup paint (base coat, pearl top coat) from my local Nissan dealer for about $2.75/bottle. You'll need the paint code found on your car for them to get the correct color match. As Ravq said, you will need patience with the application of the paint. Before you start applying the touch-up paint, make sure your surface is clean AND dry. Apply a few layers of THIN paint so that it doesn't lump up. Additionally, apply the coats in one direction, and not in random directions, which will help out keeping it nice and uniform. Wait for each coat to fully dry before you apply the next coat or you'll have some problems. Once those are dried, apply the top coat. Your car will look better w/ these small touchups and not leave any pieces of bare metal exposed to the elements that could potentially rust out your sheetmetal. If in the process you actually messed up and you get lumping, use a very, very fine grit sandpaper (say 400 grit) to get the lumps out, but try be patient w/ the initial application of the touchup paint, and you won't have to use the sandpaper.

For the swirl marks, light scratches, or some scrubbed off paint of some guys' car that didn't know how to properly park and accidentally hit yours (or the paint from a ping pong table falling on the side of your car as your neighbors were moving it in the street, as happened to me recently), use Meguir's Body Scrub first and then followup with a bar of clay to try to remove them--you'd be amazed, esp. with the Meguir's Body Scrub. They're not 100% effective, but they do a pretty good job, and for the most part most people won't notice that anything bad even happened to your car. Good luck.

[Edited by Maxima95GLE on 12-06-2000 at 07:23 PM]

 

https://maxima.org/forums/showthread...threadid=12487

Good luck.

 

I too feel your pain. I have a black maxima and I regret ever getting it. The paint scratches so easily and it takes me forever to wash and wax my car without getting swirl marks. Although the scratches are only seen up close, when I do see one I get so pissed off and wonder why Nissan didn't make a stronger paint. Is this because it's a flat clear coat paint unlike metallic paint?

 

Thanks a lot Maxima95GLE; it really help.

 

I bought my touch up paint from my Nissan dealer. First I bought the one witht he brush but I found that it didn't come out that great. I went to another nissan dealer and they sold me one that looks like a marker. You can use both sides of the marker and it comes out great. The advantage of using this is that you don't get streaks or dripping.

 

Did ya just slap it on there? Bad! Well, too late now. Next time read http://www.carcareonline.com/paint_chips.html. It is <b>very important</b> to layer the paint and properly blend it into the surrounding factory paint, or it will never match, even if it's the same color! Most of the visible difference in color is not due to the pigment, it is due to poor application that causes light to reflect differently from the area causing it to look like a different hue. If you properly apply it, even if the touch up paint is a slightly different color, it will blend in much much better.

 

the scratch is deep and took the paint off will touch up paint work