Does anybody know where you can buy Chip-mender pens? Their website hasn't worked in quite some time. Are they still in business?
I don't know what a chip mender pen is, but my toyota dealers sold me a paint pen with the silver paint for my Prius for just $6.50 on sale. It has a ballpoint on the end that works well for getting paint into scratches without making a mess.
I was not happy with the color match of the Chip Mender pen. The original Toyota touch up pen is almost as easy to use and the color match is perfect.
I've been told by several people (including the parts manager at my local Toyota dealer) that paint pens in general do a terrible job at blending in with the rest of the paint job. They say it'll cover the chipped area, but you can easily tell where it was once chipped. Has that been the experience of others?
depends. I've applied the clearcoat that's on the other side of the pen. On some areas, it's hardly noticeable. In other areas, it is. Depends on the nature of the scratch/dent I suppose.
I finally found a site for the pens, http://www.chipmender.com/Auto-Paint-Order.html I have used them with good results.
Whenever I have to do a paint chip repair, I'm probably going to do what this fellow did, for an undetectable repair: http://www.spydermagazine.com/2000/july/Paint/paint.htm
I scratched up the side of the rear bumper while parallel parking next to a 2 foot high curb. I just used the Toyota pen and now the damage is no longer noticeable unless you look for it. If you look for it, it's very visible. I think the paint color makes a big difference. On light colors like Silver (my color) when you look at the car you mostly see the paint not the reflections off the clearcoat. So even an uneven surface is not very noticeable. But with darker colors like my old car that was black, you see the clearcoat reflections when you look at the car, and any imperfection in the surface changes those reflections and so is very visible. I did a procedure similar to the spyder post above on my black car. It took several hours and the surface imperfections were still visible as concave depressions in the surface. But on a light colored car I'm sure it would have looked perfect.
this is helpful. today I found the damage that hitting some debris on the road did... almost the whole passenger side scratched at the very bottom of the panels! OUCH! at least it's very low and no noticable dents
