Weird Scratch Repair

[bigbopper180]

Hey All,



I have a strange scratch on the side of my car. I`d take a picture but it`s dark out right now. It looks to me like before I got the car there was a scratch and someone did a crappy job of putting on a line touch up paint and just letting it dry. The "scratch" is raised up a bit above the paint which is what let me to that conclusion.



A coworker suggested rubbing compound and I went with Turtle Wax...dear God was that a mistake. After seeing a billion new tiny scratches around the big one I raged out for 30 minutes and buffed the hell out of it with scratch remover and repaired THAT damage, but now I`m back to square one. Since I`m a newbie at this stuff, what can I do step by step to fix it completely? Thanks!

[SpoolinNoMore]

If it`s raised as in there were globs of excessive touch up paint, polishing won`t take it out. You`ll either need to remove the old stuff or wet sand it with 2000 or 1500 grit (I just did some major touch up paint followed by 2000 grit wet sanding with much success, but my touch up paint had only cured for 24 hours so yours may be a bit harder than mine). Of course follow up with heavy compounding and then a medium polish (M105/M205 or UNO are some of the more widely used polishes).

[Richard Grasa]

Spoolin is correct, you will need to wetsand the high portion of the touch up paint to bring it level with the original paint and then compound the sanding scratches out. If you don`t know how to wetsand and compound, don`t try this yourself unless you can practice on a junk panel or something first.. This is a process that takes some skill and it`s very easy to make things much worse and sand/buff through the clear if you are not very careful.



If you decide to do it yourself, I would start with 1000 grit and sand about 90 - 95% of the high spot with that, move to 1500 and level the remaining high spot and then move to 2000 to feather and blend it with the rest of the paint. Be very careful that when you are sanding the bulk of the high spot that you are not also sanding the original paint at the same time, or else you will prob sand through the clear. You can use masking tape over the original paint while sanding the high spot to help keep that from happening. Just go very slow and check progress every few strokes with the sandpaper. Make sure to keep the area very wet while sanding and switch to new sandpaper often. Once you have things nice and level, you can compound the sanding scratches out.

[bigbopper180]

Hmmm well it seems like this is a big undertaking for a newbie like me, so the best thing to do would probably be to contact a detailer. I have a friend of a friend that does that kind of stuff. I`ll talk to him, maybe he can help me. Thanks for the info, guys!

[Brad B]

It`s not all that scary a job. Just go slow. I use a small art erasor as a support for my sandpaper. It keeps it flat and focused on only the raised section. And any sanding from 1500 or 2000 sandpaper easily buffs out.