Some classic and prestige cars used to be supplied with a bottle of the factory paint in the glovebox, but those days are long gone and now you’ll be expected to pay for your own. They vary in price and complexity, so we tried five different types of touch-up paint kit to see which did the best job of disguising our damage. Some conscientious new car buyers will still buy a touch-up paint kit from the dealer who supplies their new car and keep it in the glove box, ready to repair any chips as soon as they happen. This is perhaps a hangover from the bad old days when a car could fail its first MoT on corrosion, and it was a constant battle to keep it at bay. You can find a windscreen repairer online, but you’re just as likely to find somebody offering insurer-approved repairs in the car park while you shop at your local superstore. Best of all, you generally only have to give the repairer your insurance company details, and they'll invoice the insurer direct on your behalf. Clean the area with soap and water, then rub down with alcohol or white spirit. This step is vital to remove grease and give the paint a good surface to adhere to. Allow the area to dry.

This is all a bit of a hassle, but the up side is that the colour match is perfect and – if you put in a bit of finishing work with polish – it looks great. Halfords Stone Chip and Scratch Repair System The Ford paint looked cheap next to the Chipex though, which seemed like it offered a sophisticated selection of tools and fluids but actually didn’t make it any easier to get a decent finish. If you have a rare colour, it might be one of your only choices though. Recommended products to use after using the Chipex kit include our Super Concentrate Car Shampoo and our Miracle Detailer.Once the paint has dried, take a very fine wet & dry sanding paper and with a steady hand, sand down the painted area until you have it at the same level as the surrounding paint. For very small paint chips, wrap your sanding paper around the blunt end of a pencil to ensure you don’t scratch the surrounding paint.

Use car paint chip repair kits on painted surfaces only. For repairing damage to your wheels, seek out a specifically designed wheel repair kit that matches the wheels on your vehicle. Though they must be equally durable, car paints differ greatly from wheel paints. Filling in paint chips can seem like a daunting task if you have never attempted it before. There’s the pressure of making sure you only get paint in the chip itself, along with the intensity of having only so much time to repair the chip properly. Langka removes all those barriers to really make paint chip repair an easy process, no matter how much painting experience you have. Repairing paintwork is not the kind of job you want to rush into, and potentially make a mess of – so before trying each product, we rated their instructions. Some required more in-depth procedures than others, and we were keen to ensure that those which involved making a repair look worse before it got better spelled this out clearly. Apply the primer or base coat. Use a very fine brush or paint pen if your kit comes with one. Allow to dry.

You dab the touch-up paint onto the chip, wait for it to dry and then wipe off excess to using a special blending liquid and cloth. Once you are happy with the result you can polish it using a supplied fluid and microfibre cloth. Using it is very satisfying, but deeper or larger chips need several coats to build up, with at least five minutes drying time in between applications. After five coats – each with a new swab and fresh pair of gloves – we gave up. The result was no better than the cheaper kits, which makes it impossible to justify the price unless your car is a very rare colour which no one else can match. Ford Service For even less outlay, there are several DIY options, ranging from pastes to full primer and paint repairs. But are they a false economy? We put eight to the test to find out. Have you ever driven behind a salt-spreader in winter and heard the miniature comets crashing into the front of your bumper and bonnet? Stone chips are more common in winter months and due to the cold wet conditions, a deep paint chip can rapidly progress to a more serious and costly problem as water and ice get into the chip and can affect the metal underneath. Before filling in scratches with touch-up paint, stop by your local detail shop or speak with the head detailer at your local dealership. Buffing may correct a lot of the scratches on your vehicle unless they are deep enough to require additional paint. Detail experts should be able to tell you which route is the best. There is a downside, of course, which is that the warranty on screen repairs is virtually non-existent, and if it doesn’t work you could still be in line for a windscreen replacement. If you’re not covered on insurance, or have a big windscreen excess, this is the risk you take. Don’t expect your repairer to do anything other than point to their disclaimer. DIY windscreen repair kits