'04 IS300 - Project (Not Really) Nice Daily

[Goodspeed]

Turned 1000 miles today since purchase, so I felt it was as good a time as any to finally take some decent pics after the parts install. It helped that I gave a thorough detail on Sunday - wash, clay, polish, wax, the whole nine. This included the use of my Dr. Colorchip kit, which worked pretty great - better than my use on the Miata, and I'll probably do another round shortly. However for anyone considering the kit, heed this warning (this was my experience on the Miata as well, though I only remembered when I was thinking that I had totally ruined my hood, at least until I felt like polishing again which is never):

Basically, the kit gives you a bottle of paint, and a bottle of "Sealact" blending solution that seals the paint in the chip, and removes any excess. The instructions say to place a blob of paint next to a big chip or group of smaller ones, and smear it across with your thumb. This looks like absolute shit of course, and after a dozen or so chips your hood is covered in smeared, drying paint. But not to worry! After "a few minutes, up to 1 hour", you are meant to dampen a small portion of the included towel with the blending solution, and with "light pressure - let the solution do the work", you wipe away the excess paint. Well......no. After no more than 4-5 minutes, I had to desperately scrub away with a soaked towel (numerous times) to clear the smudges. This ferocity then took the paint out of some of the bigger chips, so I just used a very fine applicator brush to touch them up directly and gave up on the Sealact after a while. I didn't want to imagine trying to do this near the 1-hour mark, but I'd still recommend it as it works great for little groups of chips (easy to knock them out with one thumb-smear) and you can focus on the bigger ones individually.

Anyways, pics: