I'd like to know the best way to touch up a scratch on the rear bumper of an 2006 Audi A4. My color is quartz grey. I have been looking for the touchup paint for this vehicle but could not find it at Napa, Pep Boys, or Kragen. Can anyone recommend where I should get this touchup paint? The scratch doesn't look that deep but some of the paint touchup websites say I may need a clearcoat. I was thinking of just cleaning the scratch and applying several coats of paint. Does anyone here have experience doing touchup on an Audi? I would appreciate the input.

Glenn

 

the stealership has tiny bottles of touch up paint and clear coat. its actually not too bad of a price

 

Have you tried the dealer? They have the kit (a touch-up paint and a bottle of clear coat) exactly match your color. Also, I think that is the most in-expensive thing you can get from the dealer.

I apply touch-up paint with a match stick; never used the brush that come with the kit. I think match stick does the trick pretty good. However, the truth is: it is impossible to get perfect result for touch-up paint.

 

From a post I responded to on another forum about the same subject:

Honestly, dealerships know very little when it comes to practical automotive paint application. They tend to give premade touch-up bottles of paint to new customers but there are several factors that make this pointless:

1) They frequently don't even match the color on the car, especially if its a metallic color. This is because they make one huge batch and pump out 100000 little bottles. They use huge vats and all the metallic settles to the bottom. So the bottles that are filled first are a slightly different color than the ones filled last. For the same reason, cars that are painted in the beginning of the production line at the factory are slightly different than the ones painted in the end. The premade bottles do not account for this and if a dealerships understood this they would not be giving them to customers.

2) The paint from a dealership is almost always single stage paint. All cars after 1997 are painted with a 2-stage, urethane, basecoat/clearcoat paint. This is because 2-stage paints have better chip and scratch resistance, more UV blockers to prevent fading, better protection against the weather, and greater shine.

3) The bottles tend to dry up. The containers they use are not air tight by any means. After you get a new car, you probably won't need and paint for months. By that time the paint has already started to gel up and will not behave properly.

4) There are many factors that determine what color will match your car at any given point in its life. How old the car is, whether its metallic or solid, where in the production line it was painted, whether or not there are any alternates to your color based on your VIN, even what factory in the country it was painted at can all effect the color on your car. Premade paint in any form from anywhere will not take these factors into account.

SOLUTION: Custom made automotive paint. By using the Make, Model, Year, Color Code, and VIN off your car it is possible to get custom matched paint. Custom matched paint suppliers use a sophisticated computer system and highly trained color matching professionals to print out an exact recipe for your car's paint. They make it for you in whatever form you want (spray cans, paint pens etc) and some even ship it right to your door.

THE BOTTOM LINE: If you're gonna do any painting or refinishing, make sure you talk to a custom paint manufacturer first. These guys know their stuff and will get you what you need.

I hope this helps you and anyone else that reads this post.

-Mike