can BARELY feel it with my fingernail--any hope?

I

imported_tuffluck

New member
i have a very light scratch that i haven't noticed for a while on the lower portion under my driver's side door handle. it spans about 12 inches...looks like someone just brushed up against it. don't know if it happened when i got my windows tinted or what (even if it did happen there, what can i do?), but i haven't noticed it since i bought my BMW a week and a half ago.



i can just barely feel it with my fingernail in places, and other places i don't think i can feel it, but it's visible enough for me to think i can feel it. if i step back about 10' from the car i can only see about 6" of it, and it's pretty light (might be why i never noticed it before). could i wet sand it down for a mostly cover-up or is there any hope some DACP and a PC could be on at least part of the scratch? thanks for any help.



i wish we had lists of repair guys in US metro areas. there has to be someone in the DFW area that could probably be pretty good at touch-up repairs. thanks for any help.
 
oh thanks. i didn't know scottwax did this type of work. i'll let him chime in if he'd like. i am not allowed to send him private messages (hopefully i'm not the only one, heh...if so i'm not sure what i did!).
 
tuffluck said:
oh thanks. i didn't know scottwax did this type of work. i'll let him chime in if he'd like. i am not allowed to send him private messages (hopefully i'm not the only one, heh...if so i'm not sure what i did!).
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Yeah he turned off his private messages. Scott doesn't do any touchup as far as I know,but he'll be able to buff most of it out without any sanding unless it's deeper than you let on.
 
thanks. i talked to scott this morning and he's going to check it out this week. no it's not deeper than i let on, unless it's deeper than i realize. i really had to spend some time using the fingernail to see if it caught on the scratch, and it eventually did just barely. so i think it's pretty light.
 
And even if it *is* too deep for complete removal, once you get it to the almost-gone point I bet you'll find it easy enough to live with.
 
Accumulator said:
And even if it *is* too deep for complete removal, once you get it to the almost-gone point I bet you'll find it easy enough to live with.
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yeah, actually i talked to scott today and he was going to help me out this week. however, i found an electrical outlet in my parking garage today and decided to give my PC + DACP a shot and turns out it really helped a lot. the indentation is visible in the perfect amount of light, but otherwise even 6 inches away i can't see it. before, i could see it a solid 10 feet away. it's nothing that a non-autopia user could see ;)



i was irked i missed it when the car was purchased. but now, i realize if someone did the polish job i did today on the car before i bought it, i would have never noticed it. so, i think i should be happy how it turned out.



thanks for the help, guys! btw, scott is awesome if anyone is wondering. very friendly and helpful. i may or may not detail my own car when i get my own garage, but even if i do it and scott doesn't, i'm going to recommend him to my friends!
 
i don't know why but i caught this scratch in the perfect sunlight today and it pissed me off so much because it was slightly more visible than normal.



it's not through the clearcoat at all, because when i put some DACP on it, the majority of it went away. you can just see the etching of the scratch now when the sun is going down and hits it just right.



anything else i can do? would a rotary be able to hone in on the scratch part and take out anymore of it? what about wet sanding?
 
tuffluck said:
i don't know why but i caught this scratch in the perfect sunlight today and it pissed me off so much because it was slightly more visible than normal...
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Heh heh, yeah...there's always *some* lighting/etc. condition that makes such stuff look awful.



it's not through the clearcoat at all, because when i put some DACP on it, the majority of it went away. you can just see the etching of the scratch now when the sun is going down and hits it just right.
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How much work did you do with the #83?



anything else i can do? would a rotary be able to hone in on the scratch part and take out anymore of it? what about wet sanding?
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Depending on how much you've already done, you can probably get more aggressive, but I'd think twice about that myself.
 
Accumulator said:


Heh heh, yeah...there's always *some* lighting/etc. condition that makes such stuff look awful.







How much work did you do with the #83?







Depending on how much you've already done, you can probably get more aggressive, but I'd think twice about that myself.
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i went over it with 2-3 coats, but after the 2nd nothing really happened to minimize the scratch. i just don't know how much i CAN do with a PC and #83?
 
tuffluck said:
i went over it with 2-3 coats, but after the 2nd nothing really happened to minimize the scratch. i just don't know how much i CAN do with a PC and #83?
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Eh, if you stick with it you could do plenty....too much even! But yeah, it's not really efficient. 2-3 tries with #83 isn't all that much though. When I did the spot-correction on the A8 last week (and that one you could feel), I did 2-3 pretty aggressive goes with M105 before I said "good enough" and switched to finishing it out. And I do mean pretty aggressive....I was really cutting.



Still, if I were you I'd try living with it for a few weeks and see if it *really* still bothers you. I'm getting better with just living with flaws these days, life's not a car show ;)
 
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