miker2006
09-14-2006, 11:33 AM
hi all; take alook at the attched pic; scrape on the passenger side wheel well; any advice on how to fix?; any good threads to point me in the right direction?; i was thinking of using a dremel tool to get rid of excess and to clean the scrape area off; then a coat of primer followed by several coats of touch up paint, applied thinly each time; any othewr advice?; how will painting on a vertical surface make it more difficult; thanks in advance;
Gregor
09-16-2006, 12:50 PM
There`s a nice instructional section on scratches in eBook. I just used the process on two cars, a total of about 10 scratches, most not near as bad as yours. None were down to the paint.
On the first car, a 92 VW dark purple, prepped and cleaned, applied the touch-up, waited, sanded and polished. The touch up paint sanded nicely and there was little or no removal on surrounding paint.
The process went so well I tested in on 2006 Subaru. During the sanding stage I discovered that the factory touch up dries much harder than the clearcoat. It was oposite on the VW. I had a really hard time getting any materal off the subbie`s touch up. After a while I noticed that I had sanded through to the color coat in two spots around the original scratch. I recovered with touchup waited and re-sanded the newly touched up spots. With a compound and polish I was able to restore the shine. However it looks terrible. Once the area was smoothed out and polished I noticed that the metal was also dented, something you can`t easily cover with touch-up. Yesterday I got four quotes for a re-paint will be going that route.
As you`re damage, you`re not going to hurt much by trying. I`d prep with some rust remover. Tape off, and lightly wet sand with 1500 or 2000 grit. Cover with primer, then touch up. Once the touch is fully dried you can smooth it out with wet sanding, which leaves a haze that can be corrected with a compound then a polish. I used SS2.5 followed by SSR1. As I said, worked great on the VW and was a disaster on the Subbie.
If this is car you want to be perfect, don`t bother with the DIY stuff, go straight to the pros. Even on the VW, there was a slight color variance across the repair.