Touching up the paintwork

[IBM]

My behemoth (Chrysler Grand Voyager) has picked up a fair number of nicks and scrapes since I got it, and I was looking to touch it up, but I've got no idea where to start. Are there touch up kits available? I don't want to have to respray the whole car, so if there's anything out there which can help give it a once over...

Any ideas?

Chrysler's silver btw.

[alexkoon]

Your Chrysler garage will no doubt do touch up kits. Essentially your exact paint colour in a little bottle with the brush in the lid. Generally quite difficult to do right.

[chrestomanci]

Places like Halfords usually stock a large selection of colour matched paint. You look up your car's make model and year, and it will tell you you need sky blue 157, not the virtually identical blue 158 that was on ford cars that year...

Anyway once you have your touch up paint they also have leaflets telling you how to apply it. You can generally either use a touch up bottle, which looks OK, or spend the time sanding back, applying undercoat and carefully blending it in.

[kickstart 1]

They also used to do some pens which were easy to use .

[Lowe]

First of all, before resorting to touch up sticks and the like, have you given the whole car a blummin good t-cut or claybar all over?

If it's covered in nicks and scrapes, are those from hitting other things? A lot of the time when you catch something that's painted you take a bit of the paint with you (and vice versa) so t-cutting the top layer will remove the other colour without having to resort to painting everything.

For very small stone chips and the like, yes - a touch up pen or similar will do the job, however it's very easily overdone if there's loads of bits to cover and will stand out since it's virtually impossible to get a really good match on some paints.

Any chance of a few pics so we can see a little better what you're trying to fix up?

If it's really serious, I'd get Chipsaway or such like in if you want a proper job doing.

[IBM]

Lowe ... thanks for the compreshensive answer. Most of the marks are from hitting things (although, male pride intact, I should point out that the majority are from others hitting me ), and I do indeed seem to have carried away some paint, so t-cut should do the trick. As for the rest, the marks are pretty minor, scratches and nicks, and a touch up pen should do the trick (there aren't really enough of them to warrent anything more severe like chipsaway).

I'll see if I can take some pictures, but I think your diagnosis is spot on.