Fixing bad touch up paint jobs

Just joined group. Hello all!

I just bought a 02 Jetta and it was in great mechanical condition, but the prior owner though ruined the paint job with touch up paint. The car had a good amount of scratches and it appears that the person just went around the car in a short amount of time and blobbed all the scratches with touch up paint. The paint is raised above the clear coat. I wish they had just left it alone and I would have done it myself.

Question, how would one "sand down" the overlapped touch up paint and correctly repair the blemishes.

Any help would greatly be appreciated. Thanks.

The best approach would be to remove the existing touch up paint to get a better picture of what the paint finish is like. Often times people daub the paint all over the vehicle instead of applying the touch up sparingly, sometimes they even touch up areas that can be polished out

If you do not have any or limited experience take the vehicle to a professional detailer who specializes in touch up, have him/her remove the touch up, detail the vehicle and professionally touch up the nicks, scratches and chips

Sounds like they just didn't want to take the time to do a nice job.
If one is not experienced in this kind of repair, it is better to take it to a professional touch-up person. Occasionally you may get help from this type of situation here, but we deal mostly with detailing and the business side of detailing here. I have had success in removing old touch-up paint with automotive paint thinners, the thinner will remove the old touch-up without disturbing the paint around it. DA Sanding or wet-sanding by hand you risk going through the clearcoat to the basecoat, and leaving an uneven spot in the finish. Plus you would take it down even more when you compound the sanding/wet-sanding marks out, then polish to remove swirls. My suggestion to you is let someone who understands paint systems and paint thickness handle this, and you may want to have a professional detailer buff the rest of the car to blend in with your repairs.

Detailing, An Art In Motion!

Mike

The best advise is, as others have told you, is to:

1. First take it to a competent and professional paint touchup company.
You can get their name from an auto dealer, they do business with this
type of company. Let them tell you what they can do.

2. If you want to try it yourself, then, as stated, use some paint thinner,
(problem is you do not know what type of paint the touchup paint is, laq-
uer or enamel) and remove the touchup to see the condition of the
chips or scratches.

You could retouch them, but it would not be a perfect job using the tip
of a toothpick with very little paint on it.

There are some kits you can buy that will allow you to do about as good a
job as a non pro could do.

But, if you value the car take it to a pro.

Bud Abraham

Mikeymike:
That sounds like the kind of touch-ups I used to do !
You could try to shear off the part of the touch-ups that protrudes above the clearcoat by using clay. Probably coarse clay would be necessary. Then you could polish or compound to blend things the best you can.
All this is predicated on your willingness to risk damaging paint that may already have been buffed thin, etc.
The textbook way to sand these touch-ups is to tape around the spot, wet sand with 400 grit paper and a small rubber block available from body shops. Then use finer grades of paper, compound, and polish. If you remove all of the touch-up paint, you can re-apply pigmented touch-up paint and top it with clearcoat ( your results will probably still be noticable within 10 feet )
The " take it to a pro touch-up man " advice from Bud and Stephen is correct but I know I couldn't resist trying to do it myself. Good luck !
Doug
" Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."