Best way to take care of a heavy scratch!!!

ExoticAutoDetai

ExoticAutoDetai

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Have you been a victim of someone scratching your car deep? Is theres a solution that you can do without having to take your car to a body shop and spend grands for one scratch???
 

Typically, if you can catch the scratch with a fingernail, a respray is in order.




 
spend the $$ on a professional. It otherwise is likely to be an eyesore you will often fixate on.
 
You can try spot buffing the scratch, it'll make the edges rounded and therefore make it less apparent.
 
ExoticAutoDetai said:
Is theres a solution that you can do without having to take your car to a body shop and spend grands for one scratch???
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No suggestions to try Dr. Colorchip yet?

I'd try the $50 solution just in case it works well enough to avoid several hundred $$ at the body shop. If the Dr. doesn't fix the scratch you can still take it to the pros.
 
I read somewhere that a detailing clay can get rid of scratches, not sure if its reallll deep though.
 
Try using touch up paint on it then maybe sand it down so its flat. then go over with M105 and then M205.
 
Like sohail99 said, a spot buff might be enough to satisfy you. Sometimes it's not worth taking off a lot of clear coat to completely remove it, if it's not down to the base coat already. A spot buff will make it less noticeable. Try that first.
 
Sometimes, if the scratch isn't through the color layer, you can tape off the area and shoot a coat of rattle-can clear. Blend-sanding the tape line is probably the most difficult part, or you can just spray the whole panel. Obviously not a show car fix, but it can come out decent.

Here's a link to an old thread of mine, showing my deep scratch repair experiments- http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/auto-detailing-101/20048-deep-scratch-repair.html
 
I have been offering a pretty good alternative to respraying with the body shop. Here are some pictures and an explanation of the repair. It's pretty straight forward depending on your experience level. It's easy to learn, and execute. The repair is still visible...but from a short distance, you would never know.

Here is the scratch I worked on. It was through the paint deep, and probably 4-5 inches long.​

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I used a scratch filler to fill in the depth of the scratch. Use a soft silicone squeegee to pickup the excess. Once it's dry, you can remove the overspread with acetone (or something similar) and a thin non plushy towel. Use a suede type of window towel. You want your towel to not be plushy. You don't want to disturb the filler. I wrap a thin window towel up in a rubber sandpaper holder (or anything rubber and flat will do). This enables you to slide right over the scratch and pickup the excess...without pulling the filler out of the scratch. Once you clean it up, the scratch should look like this...​



As you can see...the filler is only inside the scratch. Now, you're gonna want to add about 3 (sometimes 4) coats over the filler with touchup paint. Try not to let the paint run, it will just create more work for yourself. Go light on the first coat (just cover the filler). Then you can go heavier on the second and third coat.

You want to leave multiple coats cause your next step is to wet sand, and compound it down flat. If you look close, you can see the repair. When it's done, it should look similar to this...​



Take 2000 grit sandpaper, and the rubber holder. Wet the area down well, and start wet sanding. You should see a LOT of the touchup paint color coming up. If you see a lot of chalky white...then you're hitting too much of the clearcoat. You wanna aim at just the paint. If this makes sense...you almost wanna balance right on top of just the touchup paint. That way you're just hitting the paint. Don't sand it completely down. You should feel a small lump, but it should feel smooth and flush. Then, remove the 2000 grit scratches with some compound, swirl remover, and polish polish polish.

To some, this will be an easy process. If you've never done anything like this...I would advise practicing on something you can ruin. Otherwise, you could leave yourself with a very unhappy customer. Once this process is practiced and perfected...it's a great add on service. I charge an easy $50 to fill scratches of this type. Why $50...cause in my opinion, it's specialty service. Not all detailers have the balls to attempt this on a customers car! But, it's well worth it! Hope this helped. :dblthumb2:
 
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Wow! very nice results! impressive, I cant even see the scratch at all. How long did that take you?
 
Good work Kristopher!! Going try it on my dad beater when it gets warmer.
 
STI4Life06 said:
Wow! very nice results! impressive, I cant even see the scratch at all. How long did that take you?
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It probably took about an hour to completely be done. The work itself doesn't take long at all. It's more of a waiting process for things to dry before you can wet sand, compound, wipe excess, etc. At this point...I've learned to work it into the rest of the detail. Thanks!!
 
Kristopher1129 said:
It probably took about an hour to completely be done. The work itself doesn't take long at all. It's more of a waiting process for things to dry before you can wet sand, compound, wipe excess, etc. At this point...I've learned to work it into the rest of the detail. Thanks!!
Click to expand...

I am definitely going to be trying this on my fathers Jeep Cherokee once it gets warmer outside
 
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