I’ve used VW paint pens, Chipex kits and anonymous non-branded paint pens off eBay on the various VW’s I’ve owned. Touch up paint is always one of my first purchases for a new car (usually bought before I get the car) as IMHO it’s always a case of when rather than if you’ll need to use it.
I’m keen on the VW paint pens; I’ve always found the brush inside the cap to be too large for the size of stone chip being repaired. Maybe they’ve changed to using the ‘nib in cap’ type pens since I used VW touch up paint which was many years ago.
The non-branded paint pen I current have is very good; the colour match is spot on and it has a hollow nib applicator in the top of the cap, which makes dispensing very small amounts of paint into the stone chip very easy. I find an advantage of the nib applicator is that you don’t need to unscrew the cap off the paint pen; IMHO excessive exposure to the atmosphere of the paint in the pen by removing the cap makes it become thicker and more difficult to get good results.
I’ve found the Chipex kits (or Dr Colourchip, which is very similar) are pretty good but IMHO you do need to practice to get good results. The big benefit of the Chipex kits is that if you’re unhappy with the results of your efforts, you can remove the paint you’ve applied with the blending solution that’s part of the kit and just start again. I found the colour match of the paint in the Chipex kit was very good.
Bear in mind that whatever paint you use, the colour of the car can be a factor in how good the colour match is;
- lighter metallic colours such as silver are more difficult to get a good colour match - the metallic particles in the paint applied to a stone chip are likely to ‘lie’ in a different orientation to those in the surrounding original factory paint, so can give the appearance of being a different shade.
- Colour match on darker colours tends to be good, but because of the highly reflective nature of darker colours, repairs can sometimes be seen if the paint applied to the stone chips isn’t completely level with the surrounding paint.
- IMHO solid white paint is the most forgiving and easiest for undetectable DIY stone chip repairs.
