Spray Touch Up Paint? Where and what's the best?

[CosmicGrooves]

I have about a square inch of bad news that I need to touch up. It seems a spray would be better for leaving a smooth finish.

Where can I get the exact right color for touch up? The last time I had touch up paint that was supposed to match my car, didn't. It was darker or something.

Suggestions?

[kingkakyle]

its because of clear coat
it makes the color different....
also got to take into consideration fading caused by the elements and the sun so its difficult to get a match from a bottle or can
just an fyi

[CosmicGrooves]

Fading I'm not worried about. My car is garage kept and I work evenings/nights.

[N-Dawg]

I need touch up paint as well. They sell these paint markers on e-bay supposedly they work, I'm thinking of buying one.

[sahuddleston]

i have yet to find any touch up paint that looks good. if you find something that works let me know.

[Black Bob]

You can get away with off-shade touch up paint if you're looking to fix pinhead size chips but for bigger chips you'll find touch up paint is a waste of money. [Prepare for ranting] Although 99.9% of the cars in the US have clearcoat which makes the underlying color layer darker, greedy touch up paint manufacturers are still matching only the underlying coat so you HAVE to buy their clearcoat to get a closer match (remember: gloss makes colors darker). To make matters worse, being that around 90% of the cars in the US have metallic flake, the odds of you not making your car look like a Dalmation are slim. And to go one step further, if you have triple stage paint you're gonna find that nothing on the shelf is gonna work for you no matter what size the chip. But none of that really matters being that the adhesion is crap on all touch up paints.

[kenny6683]

These touch up cans from Autozone work pretty good if you do light coats at a time...i had bought one for my Solara (green color) for an area of about 4 inches and honestly you could not notice it at all.

http://www.autozone.com/autozone/catalo ... tid=162287

if you overspray though... then this will turn out bad
just make sure you mask everything else off

[CosmicGrooves]

Well, the spot I need is about 1 to 2 square inches right on the passenger side mirror. I guess I'll call Maaco or something. Hopefully, they don't make it worse.

[NightRider]

I wouldn't do macco my friend. Do what the other guy said about the spray can from autozone.