FOR THOSE IN A HURRY:
This product is phenomenal! I highly recommend it.
FOR THOSE WITH MORE TIME:
I recieved the kit the other day and had some time to try it last night and this morning. I went out to the garage and started taking a close look at the rock chips on my front bumper, front fenders, side mirror and intake. I had already tried to touch up a few of the chips on one of the front fenders a couple of months ago. Try as I might, I wasn't able to do a very good job. There was a little bit of paint that was outside of the chip boundary, and the surface of the paint in the middle had sunk into the chip recess. Like an idiot, I got out a razor knife and tried to scrape the excess off of the edges, and ended up putting a couple of very slight scratches in the good paint. Boy, it was all I could do to get rid of those with some Scratch-X. My poor fingerprints were about half gone by the time the scratches were. With the Langka kit, you're not supposed to let the paint dry for more than a couple of days max (24 hours in most cases, the instructions say), so I didn't think that putting the "blob remover" (as they call it) on the existing scratches would do anything. But I thought, "What's the worst that could happen?". Well normally when I say that, the end result is disastrous, but in this case, the gamble worked quite well. You have to rub harder and a lot longer, but eventually I was able to get all of the excess paint from the touchups I had performed months earlier, off of those chips. They give you this cleaner that you can use as a prep, and you should really use this if you don't already have another form of paint prep. I generally use laquer thinner as it reeeeeeeeely cleans the surface and it won't harm cured paint, but then again, I'm very brave. If you're a novice, then definitely use the cleaner they provide. Rinse, dry, then start applying the paint. At first I tried to use the five dollar a piece special brushes I bought at the hobby shop. They are very tiny, like a needle. In my opinion, they are great at filling in small chips and scratches normally (especially scratches) but not so good if you are using the Langka kit. The brushes they provide are much better, because they can hold much more paint. The instructions say to apply the paint sparingly (so that there will be less paint to remove) but I found the opposite to be true. It's better to have a big blob of paint to guarantee that all of the recesses of the chip will be filled in and, more importantly, the thickness of the blob is enough to cover the fact that the paint, while drying, will sink into the hole. So I went blob happy. I was putting big blobs of paint on all of the chips. I had two very small chips about a quarter of an inch apart, so I just dropped a blob of paint large enough to cover both of them. I really wanted to test out this product. Of the 35 or so chips I blobbed, I had to go back after about a half hour and reblob some of the bigger ones where the paint had really sunk in (i.e. deep chips).
I got up the next morning and was anxious to see how this blob remover would really work. Of course the car looked horrible at first with all of these huge blobs of paint all over the hood and fenders. They provide you with a small plastic card (essentially a smooth, flat surface) and a small, thin, soft cloth to wrap around the card. You wrap the card with the cloth, hold it tightly on the back, pour some of the blob remover (which looks like liquid dishwasher detergent, i.e. Cascade) onto the cloth, then start gently rubbing on top of the blob. After maybe 10-15 seconds, you can see the blob start to get smaller. After maybe 15 more seconds, you can see the surface of the blob start approaching the surface of the original paint. What's cool is that the original surrounding paint is absolutely unaffected, yet the blob is melting away like warm butter. Just keep gently rubbing until the top of the blob is just slightly higher than the surrounding paint, then stop, rub the excess remover off of the area with a clean cloth, then take the card again and oh so gently rub one swipe at a time, inspecting the surfaces until they are flush. After each surface was even, I would stop, wipe the excess off, then step back about two feet from where I was working, and I kid you not, I could not find the chip! Now some of the chips have edges that are a little bit "cratered out" because of the impact of the rock, and you really can't do much about that. But for 20 bucks, I don't see how you could get any better results than this. It took me about a half hour to rub down all 35 rock chips. The one that turned out the best was the biggest one, actually. It was on the front of my side mirror, right on the edge of a curved surface (so it was convex). I just rubbed gently, always moving the angle of the card over the edge to rub the blob down evenly, and it simply vanished.
They also provide you with a little bottle of "paint sealant". Not sure what is actually in there, and I didn't have time to do that this morning as I had to get to work.
It was just so satisfying to walk around the front of the car before I headed out the door and not be able to pick out any of the dozens of rock chips that had been plaqing me before.
So I am amazed by this product, and many of you know how extrordinarily picky I am.
This product is phenomenal! I highly recommend it.
FOR THOSE WITH MORE TIME:
I recieved the kit the other day and had some time to try it last night and this morning. I went out to the garage and started taking a close look at the rock chips on my front bumper, front fenders, side mirror and intake. I had already tried to touch up a few of the chips on one of the front fenders a couple of months ago. Try as I might, I wasn't able to do a very good job. There was a little bit of paint that was outside of the chip boundary, and the surface of the paint in the middle had sunk into the chip recess. Like an idiot, I got out a razor knife and tried to scrape the excess off of the edges, and ended up putting a couple of very slight scratches in the good paint. Boy, it was all I could do to get rid of those with some Scratch-X. My poor fingerprints were about half gone by the time the scratches were. With the Langka kit, you're not supposed to let the paint dry for more than a couple of days max (24 hours in most cases, the instructions say), so I didn't think that putting the "blob remover" (as they call it) on the existing scratches would do anything. But I thought, "What's the worst that could happen?". Well normally when I say that, the end result is disastrous, but in this case, the gamble worked quite well. You have to rub harder and a lot longer, but eventually I was able to get all of the excess paint from the touchups I had performed months earlier, off of those chips. They give you this cleaner that you can use as a prep, and you should really use this if you don't already have another form of paint prep. I generally use laquer thinner as it reeeeeeeeely cleans the surface and it won't harm cured paint, but then again, I'm very brave. If you're a novice, then definitely use the cleaner they provide. Rinse, dry, then start applying the paint. At first I tried to use the five dollar a piece special brushes I bought at the hobby shop. They are very tiny, like a needle. In my opinion, they are great at filling in small chips and scratches normally (especially scratches) but not so good if you are using the Langka kit. The brushes they provide are much better, because they can hold much more paint. The instructions say to apply the paint sparingly (so that there will be less paint to remove) but I found the opposite to be true. It's better to have a big blob of paint to guarantee that all of the recesses of the chip will be filled in and, more importantly, the thickness of the blob is enough to cover the fact that the paint, while drying, will sink into the hole. So I went blob happy. I was putting big blobs of paint on all of the chips. I had two very small chips about a quarter of an inch apart, so I just dropped a blob of paint large enough to cover both of them. I really wanted to test out this product. Of the 35 or so chips I blobbed, I had to go back after about a half hour and reblob some of the bigger ones where the paint had really sunk in (i.e. deep chips).
I got up the next morning and was anxious to see how this blob remover would really work. Of course the car looked horrible at first with all of these huge blobs of paint all over the hood and fenders. They provide you with a small plastic card (essentially a smooth, flat surface) and a small, thin, soft cloth to wrap around the card. You wrap the card with the cloth, hold it tightly on the back, pour some of the blob remover (which looks like liquid dishwasher detergent, i.e. Cascade) onto the cloth, then start gently rubbing on top of the blob. After maybe 10-15 seconds, you can see the blob start to get smaller. After maybe 15 more seconds, you can see the surface of the blob start approaching the surface of the original paint. What's cool is that the original surrounding paint is absolutely unaffected, yet the blob is melting away like warm butter. Just keep gently rubbing until the top of the blob is just slightly higher than the surrounding paint, then stop, rub the excess remover off of the area with a clean cloth, then take the card again and oh so gently rub one swipe at a time, inspecting the surfaces until they are flush. After each surface was even, I would stop, wipe the excess off, then step back about two feet from where I was working, and I kid you not, I could not find the chip! Now some of the chips have edges that are a little bit "cratered out" because of the impact of the rock, and you really can't do much about that. But for 20 bucks, I don't see how you could get any better results than this. It took me about a half hour to rub down all 35 rock chips. The one that turned out the best was the biggest one, actually. It was on the front of my side mirror, right on the edge of a curved surface (so it was convex). I just rubbed gently, always moving the angle of the card over the edge to rub the blob down evenly, and it simply vanished.
They also provide you with a little bottle of "paint sealant". Not sure what is actually in there, and I didn't have time to do that this morning as I had to get to work.
It was just so satisfying to walk around the front of the car before I headed out the door and not be able to pick out any of the dozens of rock chips that had been plaqing me before.
So I am amazed by this product, and many of you know how extrordinarily picky I am.
