With all the paint chip problems, I was wondering if anyone has any input on touching up my rear bumper. Suprising as it may sound, this was my fault - not bad paint. I "bumped" my 4 week old AE with a friends Ford F-350. I have a couple of 3" long gouges that are about 1/8" deep and one 6" gouge that just took paint off. It's on the upper corner of the rear bumper.

I was just going to use several coats of touch up paint to fill the gouges and then rub it out. Now I'm wondering if I can fill the gouge with something like epoxy and then paint that. Does anyone have a suggestion or experience with this? Also, will regular touch up paint work on the plastic bumper? I seem to recall hearing about special paints for plastic.

One note - when I was at the dealership picking up the paint, I noticed that they had several hundred bottles of it. They must know about the problems.

 

if you're serious about this do it right....

you have to get a bucket buy 1000 grit 2000 and 3000 grit sandpaper....a nic sander also comes in handy sometimes...but ONLY if its as big as the tip(the chip)

take a toothpick dip it into the paint which sits better in a small dish (cap of a container for film)

what you dont want to do is use the humongous brush and go over the cracks because the paint will not sit right

it will sit like |V| the |'s being the surrounding paint

put it on in layers and when you've let it dry thoroughly sand it down going from 1000 to 3000 grit....makes it much easier if you put the sand paper on the tip of something(ie. the eraser of a pencil) btw you should soak the sandpaper a while(overnight)

when you're finished with the 3000 grit dry it and just polish the haze out


ive learned its much easier to just live with the chips, and most probably repaint at a later time: 3M clearmask???