repetitive door dings/scratches

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aalbs

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Just found this forum a few days ago and impressed with all of the information here! Can someone tell if if it's possible to buff/polish out the repetitive door ding/scratches shown in the picture? This is my "new" daily driver a 96 Maxima that has about of foot in length of the scratches. Only a few of them can you actually see gray through it. I'm trying to determine if it's worth it to purchase a DA polisher to try and correct some of the many scratches on this car.
 
First you need to determine how deep the scratch is. If you rub your finger nail lightly against the scratch does your nail catch? If it doesn't you can most likely polish it out. If your nail catches you need Doctor Colorchip.

Good luck
 
Only snag the nail in a couple of places. Would I try to polish before applying the Dr. Colorchip or after? Also will polishing affect paint chips in a negative way such as tearing more paint away from the area to make the chip larger?
 
Polishing can affect chips, and sometimes scratches, by removing loose paint around the edges. It's hard to tell from the picture, but those pretty much all look like chips to me, rather than scratches.

I know you are new here, but there is a limit to what you can do with scratches, the total amount of paint on your car is approx. the thickness of a sheet of paper, to make the scratch "disappear" you need to remove the paint around it down to the level of the scratch, in most cases that is not possible without making things worse.

It's very difficult to remove an actual "scratch", frequently clearcoated cars (like most for the last 20+ years) will have "scuffs" which are usually shallow enough to be removed. So IMO you need to be thinking more about filling in those marks rather than trying to buff them out, and you're on your way to that with the Dr. Colorchip.

Now, just stop from happening whatever is making those marks!
 
The marks are all from the previous owner who always opened their other car door into this one and allowed the door to rest on the paint while getting in and out.
 
I'm trying this from my phone so I'm not sure how small this pic is but do you think these scratches on the top of the car might polish out? It basically looks like they threw bags on top & dragged them off. I know its just an old maxima but I'd like to do what I can to make it look decent. Thanks for the help thus far.

Sent from my Droid using AG Online
 
They look more like damage from eggs being thrown at the car. My old truck had about 3 spots that looked like that. Egg shells just do lots of damage to paint.
 
aalbs said:
do you think these scratches on the top of the car might polish out? It basically looks like they threw bags on top & dragged them off. I know its just an old maxima but I'd like to do what I can to make it look decent.
Click to expand...

You should be able to improve the appearance of that substantially by polishing.
 
What products would you recommend using to attempt to tackle this?

Sent from my Droid using AG Online
 
If you're not sure what you're doing yet hand vs. machine, you can just get some Meguiar's Ultimate Compound at a local store, and use it with a terry applicator. If the area is large, it will be tiring, but it can certainly be done by hand. Give it a try, maybe you'll get bitten by the bug, lol!
 
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