via amazon.com

$17.99 at Amazon

If you want a simple car polish that works great without a lot of fancy extra ingredients, it’s hard to beat this product from Mothers. This is my personal favorite polish for all my vehicle detailing work. Simplicity is why. It’s easy to apply and does exactly what a car polish is supposed to do. Every time I use it, the results are stunning.

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What to Know About Car Paint Repair Kits

As every conscientious vehicle owner knows, car paint doesn’t stay perfect forever. Scratches, chips and rust spots inevitably develop on even the most well-cared-for vehicles, and that’s why car paint repair kits were invented.

Vehicle paint is made up of three layers: primer, paint and clear coat. If a scratch or chip has only gone through the clear coat, a simple, non-paint scratch removal product is probably enough to hide it. If a flying stone, stray shopping cart or another vehicle cause a chip that goes through the clear coat and the paint, more substantial repair is needed. That’s where proper paint repair kits come in.

These kits include a small can of paint that matches your vehicle’s original color as closely as possible, along with various application tools. The best kits provide exact color matches to almost any modern vehicle, along with the right tools to make the repair job relatively simple. Here are six of the best car paint repair kits you can buy.

The post Our Favorite Car Paint Repair Kits appeared first on Family Handyman.

What’s the Best Paint for Plastic?

When painting plastic, adhesion dynamics can vary greatly, so you’ll get the best results using a product specifically made for your application. We’ve gathered some recommendations from a range of first-hand reviews for use on a variety of different projects. The best examples hit the mark for application properties, adhesion, durability and cost.

The post Best Paint to Use on Plastic appeared first on Family Handyman.

You can typically fix a rock chip that is about one-fourth the size of a dime (that’s about a 1/8 to a 1/4 inch in size).

When Is a Chip Too Far Gone?

The paint chip shown here should have been repaired long ago.

• The metal inside the chip has begun to rust and lift the paint at the edges. The fix shown here is for fresh chips that have yet to rust.
• If you see a rust spot or a dent along with your chip, you’ll need to perform a more challenging fix than this tutorial presents.

The post How to Repair Chipped Car Paint appeared first on Family Handyman.