JimDaugherty

I purchased the LANGKA Paint Chip Repair Kit to try on my three rides:
2003 Impulse Red Toyota RAV4, purchased 3 years old in July 2006 with 23.5K, off lease from a Cincinnati, OH leasing dealer. The car did not get the best care in its first life (but it was cheap, under the residual value). I bought Toyota touch-up paint for $7.26 plus tax at the dealer. I got a metal bottle with a brush and a “pen tip.”

2005 Diamond Silver Mercedes 350SLK, purchased 2 years old in November 2006 with 17K, off lease from a Mercedes dealer north of Boston, MA. The car got pretty good care and has a stone chip that it appears the dealer repaired; it has a significant blob on the hood. I bought Mercedes touch-up paint for $14.00 plus tax at the dealer; two metal bottles, each with brush. One bottle of paint and one of clear coat. More on the SLK later in another post, probably at SLKWorld.com. As the LANGKA website indicates, old repairs are more of a challenge. I’m not there yet.

2006 Milano Red Acura TSX, purchased about a year old in July 2007 with 9.8K, “Acura exec” car from the Acura dealer in Lexington, KY (6sp, Navi, Certified: $25,100). Other than some “road rash” on the snoot, it is pretty much apple pie. I bought Honda R81 Milano Red paint from the Honda dealer (the Cincinnati Acura dealer is a 70-mile drive). Because I gave the parts man the paint code, I got the paint (a metal bottle like the Toyota paint) for $12.77 plus tax. Damn glad I didn’t pay retail.

LANGKA Paint Chip Repair Kit
What I received is similar to what you see at the website. My bottles had screw-off caps, not the flip-tip cap shown in the video. Not having the flip tip caps makes using them less convenient.

http://www.langka.com

Note that there are several videos and quite a few pictures; look around the website while you are there.

The $40 Paint Chip Repair Kit.
I used the PREPAINT on several chips (the rusty chip on the RAV4 shown it the picture). However, I didn’t have problems with the new paint coming out during the repair process, with or without the PREPAINT. Thus, I am not convinced that the PREPAINT is very helpful. I did wash the cars first with Dawn dish soap and clayed them before I used the Paint Chip Repair Kit. I suspect that, as with any paint work, getting the surface clean first has a LOT to do with the result, particularly with light color cars.

The Paint Chip Repair Kit also has Paint Sealant. This seems to be pretty much a paint treatment, polish or wax. I didn’t notice much difference from Finish 2000 or Meguiar’s Gold Class Clear Coat Liquid Car Wax. Not very impressed here either.

Also in my Paint Chip Repair Kit, I got 3 small paintbrushes. I did not use these. I tried using toothpicks to apply the paint. However, I found that making a blob with the brush tip worked well.

My kit also has a plastic card, like a credit card. I stacked two other cards (flat ID cards that had nothing embossed on them) to make the plastic card more rigid and stay flat. I also used an old sheet, which I washed and ironed (clean and flat). I was able to hold the cloth flat on the stack of cards fairly well. It is important that the cloth does not “dig” into the new paint while you rub the new paint smooth with The Blob Eliminator.

My kit also has a polishing cloth to be used with the Paint Sealant. I was not impressed and did not use it; I used terry cloth instead. My kit did not have the videodisk; I suspect that it is the same video as at the website.

Note that LANGKA also offers a $30 The Blob Eliminator. Here, it appears that you just get The Blob Eliminator and the plastic card. Consider saving $10 and passing on the other stuff in the $40 Kit. There is also a $19.95, 2 ounce bottle, which is more that you will use on several cars. Also, consider Mothers California Gold Paint Chip Repair With Langka Technology, currently $18 on eBay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Case-...QQcmdZViewItem

Methodology:
I pretty much followed the instructions. Work in the shade, clean the surface, use factory paint. I made a blob with the touch-up paint brushes, waited overnight, and used The Blob Eliminator to “grind off” the blob. It appears that the trick is to make the blob cover all of the edges of the chip and be above the original paint. If the new paint is below the original paint, you will have a pit to catch wax and dirt. I have such a pit on some of the larger chips. The video shows a Squeegie Technique. However, I didn’t use that method. It appeared that the Squeegie Technique would work best on large chips on a flat part of the car. I either had small chips or the big chips were on the edge of a panel. Thus, I didn’t have anything to guide the plastic card “squeegie.” I will give that method a try on the SLK.

After The Blob Eliminator, I wiped the dried, white residue and used either Finish 2000 or Meguiar’s Gold Class Clear Coat Liquid Car Wax. The results were very good. Regardless of the chip size, the result was about 70-90% “fixed.” I have little doubt that I could duplicate the before/after pictures at the LANGKA website. Theirs may have been perfect. However, you are largely at the mercy of photography. I took my pictures with a phone.

The Impulse Red RAV4 has a bright metallic paint with clear coat. Note that in this first picture, just the clear coat is off, the base color coat is pretty much intact (like a drop of brake fluid hit the finish, but wiped off before it went though the color coat). I put clear coat on the RAV4 repairs (from the Mercedes touch-up paint), which helped a lot. Again, regardless of the size of the repair, it looks much better. But, it is not 100%.



Here it is "improved."



Here is a pretty standard chip in the curve surrounding the grill.



Around the grill "improved." There is another chip at the end of my finger that looks great. Still there, but great.



This is the worst of all, rusty old chip.



Rusty old chip, a bit improved.



The TSX has a “softer” red. I used the same approach. The Acura dealer repaired a dime-size chip in the bumper before delivery. (“Detail man in a truck.”) Like my repairs, you pretty much cannot see the repair if you are looking at the car. You can see it if you are looking for chips, though.

Pretty standard road rash; lots of little chips. None of them are into the metal, but they are into the primer.



These are not noticeable, especially under a bit of dust (90% of the time).



Lookin' good. It looks nearly this good in real life, too!



Conclusions:
Pay attention, don’t follow very close, park the car in the back of the lot and walk a ways, try to keep the damage to a minimum if having a chip or a ding bugs you. The repairs took a couple of sessions, about an hour each. The result was a great improvement; but not perfect. The repairs were also under 50 bucks; a fraction of a professional’s repaint. I suspect that those of you who use power buffers could get another piece of the way to “perfect.” But not perfect.

Is it good enough for my purpose? I’m going for a drive now; isn’t that what cars are really all about?

Power1Pete

Great post! I am glad Langka worked very well for you.

Reach

Wow, great post, thank you! For anyone looking to see what a before / after can be like with touchup, this is great info.