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[SickBoy]

As though it wasn't enough that my car got scraped by an old lady who wasn't paying attention a couple of weeks ago, today, some jackass moved a sign in a parking lot directly into the lane I was backing into.

So I back up, and it's in my blind spot until it creeps into my rear view just as I'm basically on top of it. So now the rear bumper of my car has a couple of chunks of paint missing (about 1/16 of an inch in diameter) and a surface scrape about 3/4 of an inch long. It's not big damage, but it's there. Any advice on this? Will touch up paint do the trick?

 

[robox]

use this as an excuse to spray paint your entire car flat black. it'll hide all scratches and scrapes and give you peace of mind because, who cares, it's a spray painted car. it's the newest rage, man.

or just paint over it... but if you really want it to look nice, you gotta fill it, sand it smooth then paint. spray works well as brushes leave visible streaks.

 

[SickBoy]

No one?

I'm fairly sure this'll work OK, but a google search rendered very little help. I remember my mom's old car came with a little bottle of touch-up paint with a brush in the lid that was supposed to be good for dings and scratches. I'm hoping something similar will work for me. Still, it's been a long time since I saw that little bottle of touch up paint... and a lot of the sites I did find seem pretty damn involved.

EDIT: Ah, at least one response. And no, I don't think I want to spray it black. At least, not until it's a year old...

 

[Vormund]

So is this a new car?

 

[fart]

so you're not holding the old lady's insurance company to the damage from before? if you were going to, you could try to get them to pay for a respray. if no adjuster's seen it, that is. if it's really bad you can sand it down and primer it, but you need a sprayer to paint it. if you're short on cash and time it's probably better just to live with it until someone else hits you and you can get their insurance company to pay for it.

oh, those aren't huge scrapes. you might be able to match it with touch-up paint. it will basically look like you touched it up with touch up paint though.

 

[Burger]

Simple, if you want a professional finish, go see a professional.

 

[SickBoy]

so you're not holding the old lady's insurance company to the damage from before? if you were going to, you could try to get them to pay for a respray. if no adjuster's seen it, that is. if it's really bad you can sand it down and primer it, but you need a sprayer to paint it. if you're short on cash and time it's probably better just to live with it until someone else hits you and you can get their insurance company to pay for it.

oh, those aren't huge scrapes. you might be able to match it with touch-up paint. it will basically look like you touched it up with touch up paint though.

Yeah, the old lady has already paid for the damage she did. Lucky for me I got her license plate, because according to her, she didn't even realize she scraped us... just thought she hit a dip in the road. My wife and I, however, being stopped at the time, were quite sure we hadn't hit a dip in the road.

I'm guessing the touch-up paint route will be the way to go. It's on the bumper, fairly low and off to one side. Making it look more or less OK will be fine by me. We'll probably have this car for quite a while, but a whole repaint isn't worth the money for this type of damage. Especially given the car's target-like nature for the past couple of weeks.

I'd like to get the business whose sign it was to pay for the damage, but they didn't put the sign there, and while they're responsible for their sign, I can't deny that I'm also partly responsible for hitting it, even though it was in the dumbest place in the world and strategically placed out of my line of vision.

I hate having a newer car. Great for reliability, but in my old crapmobile, this wouldn't have been an issue of any sort.