Can touch up paint be thinned?

B

Bert

Active member
I have about a half a bottle of touch up paint which is several years old. I have one chip I tried fix but the touch up paint has become to thick to really work with, so thick that the capillary action will not take place. So can I thin the touch up paint a bit? I want to try to avoid buying an entire bottle for one chip on a nine year old car I will probably only own for another year or two.
 
Yes it can, but use very little because it can get too thin with less than you might think. I like using a small syringe to add just a drop/s at a time.
 
Try to ascertain that your thinner will be compatible with the paint. I ended up ruining a bottle of touchup paint :o



I tried adding my generic lacquer thinner to some Paintscratch.com (lacquer-based) touchup paint and it just wouldn't mix right :confused:
 
Hmm...I have an old gallon of DuPont reducer from when I painted a car..um...in 1980...that always seems to work for thinning touchup paint.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
Hmm...I have an old gallon of DuPont reducer from when I painted a car..um...in 1980...that always seems to work for thinning touchup paint.
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Your touchup paint must be enamel. I know some touchups are, especially the one-part ones (no separate clear) but assumed otherwise with my stuff.



The Paintscratch.com stuff effects a solvent action on stuff that enamels don't, so I figured it much be lacquer-based. They call their stuff "thinner" too (as opposed to reducer) but they might be using the word generically :think:



Anyhow..the way my touchup paint did the solvent-action thing made me think I could use the thinner, never thought of getting out my reducer.



My Audi-brand touchup stuff is lacquer, says so right on the bottle.
 
Sheesh, I wasn't very accurate. I have touchup paint from a variety of sources, varying from dealer bottles to Duplicolor to Paintscratch. My gallon of DuPont 3661 S "Mid-Temp" Acrylic Laquer Thinner is leftover from when my friend at the time came over with his father's paint gun and we painted my '66 Mustang back to the original color. Unfortunately, most of the paint wound up on various objects around the garage as he fiddled with the gun, with barely enough left for the car. Fortunately, that didn't deter the guy I sold it to from buying it. He was trying to relive his youth by getting a car like the one his father had when he was a teenager that he used to borrow to cruise in.
 
Accumulator said:
Setec Astronomy- OK, roger that.
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I always get confused with all this laquer/enamel stuff and the terms. Especially since almost everything I work with these days in other scenarios is 2-part.
 
Accumulator said:
Try to ascertain that your thinner will be compatible with the paint. I ended up ruining a bottle of touchup paint :o



I tried adding my generic lacquer thinner to some Paintscratch.com (lacquer-based) touchup paint and it just wouldn't mix right :confused:
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I just got off the phone the Mitsubishi dealer I bought it from and they said I could not since it was Urethane based. Now nowing this dealership, I would not be surprised if I was told this just to get me to buy another bottle from them. Maybe I will pour out a small amount and dip a toothpick in in some paint thinner to get a small amount out to see how they mix together. Hopefully it will work.
 
bert31- And isn't it a sad state of affairs when you can't trust your dealer on such a simple thing! I dunno from thinning urethanes :nixweiss



Setec Astronomy- A summer spent working in a bodyshop during college got a few things ingrained in my memory.. Enamel = reducer/lacquer = thinner being one of them ;)
 
You can reduce urethanes since it's just bottle and is not a two part urethane. You can get ppg DT870 reducer, it's made for urethanes. And every company seems to get their paint nomenclature mixed up. But urethanes have to be thinned with reducer. But a quart of reducer probably costs as much as a new bottle of paint.
 
qwertydude said:
You can reduce urethanes ... urethanes have to be thinned with reducer..
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Ah, thanks for the info.



to be honest, touch up paint never looks good when applied with the brush that comes with it, trick is in the toothpick
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I've been using small (multi-zero size) artist's brushes, but you gotta be careful with metallics as a brush that's too small can cause issues.
 
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