Please help repair these scratches

M

muaythainoob

New member
Please help me repair these scratches. Long story short, came to my car yesterday and discovered these nasty scratches mostly coming from a truck backing up to my front bumper. The upper and lower parts of the bumpers are affected. Not only does the came came off, some of the plastic from the bumper also came off. Can these be fixed with off the shelf product or seek professional help? TIA.

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Those are some pretty nasty scratches!

If you want it to look good get it re painted . Touch up will never look very good IMO. But then again touch up it will loook better than it does now if you dont want to spend the money .

No matter how good a job you do touch up will always be noticable up close.
 
DC I agree. Touch Up paint is the cheap way to go, but its never perfect. I can sand it flat and spend a ton of time trying for perfection, but its just not possible. Briando, post a pic of the scratch and maybe we can help :)
 
If you fill the scratch with 1 part bondo you won't have to spend the time layering the paint in the scratch. I also use blending solvent to clean up the excess, allow it to dry and then paint.

Cheers,
GREG
 
muaythainoob said:
I found this guy repairing deep scratches, gonna give it a try. Should I use 2000 or 3000 grit?

HOW TO Repair deep scratch in your paint - Dodge Charger Forums
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He did and excellent job!
Does look like he had single stage white and that is one of the easiest most forgiving colors to touch up though.

I wouldnt expect such fantastic results from your bumper because the scratches are much bigger and looks like the bumper itself is tore up a bit. Also metallics are not going to blend with the original paint as well. But you could def make it look better then is.

The only thing I would do differently would be tape up the edges of the damage when you paint and sand so you dont sand the factory paint . Its very easy to sand through thin factory paint .

I like these sanding foam sponges I got from Pep boys."Gator waterproof sanding sponge 2000 grit"
You can cut them to whatever size you need .You could go over the 2000 grit with 3000 and then buff out by hand even .

Good luck!
 
muaythainoob said:
I found this guy repairing deep scratches, gonna give it a try. Should I use 2000 or 3000 grit?

HOW TO Repair deep scratch in your paint - Dodge Charger Forums
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Do you have any experience wet sanding or machine polishing?

The write up on that forum looks nice, but everybody has different standards. If you are very picky I don't think you are going to like the results, particularly if your car isn't white.

It takes a LOT more than a wax (as in a machine polisher and a compound) to remove wet sanding marks and get good results. I'm not saying you cannot do it, but what is your experience with this work?
 
I missed the part where he used turtle cleaner wax!Thats not going to be abrasive enough for wet sanding scratches!

Like Todd said you need a compound but you still can do it by hand .Just put some effort into it and dont hate me the next morning when your arms are sore!:D
 
I'm a newbie to wet sanding and I don't have machine polisher. I'm waiting for my touch up paint to arrive but yesterday I used a piece of 600grit sandpaper and wet sand the damaged area to smooth out the rough edges. Now I'm left with some dull finish area. To remove those dull finish do I need to sand them again with 2000 grit and remove the dullness using rubbing compound? I'll use this opportunity to learn to touch up, worst come to worst if I mess up I'll take it to the bodyshop.

David.
 
muaythainoob said:
I'm a newbie to wet sanding and I don't have machine polisher. I'm waiting for my touch up paint to arrive but yesterday I used a piece of 600grit sandpaper and wet sand the damaged area to smooth out the rough edges. Now I'm left with some dull finish area. To remove those dull finish do I need to sand them again with 2000 grit and remove the dullness using rubbing compound? I'll use this opportunity to learn to touch up, worst come to worst if I mess up I'll take it to the bodyshop.

David.
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David,

Your flirting with disaster, if you are wet sanding with no experience, IMO practicing on your car is not the place to start. 600 grit sandpaper is way to aggressive to use on the clear coat. I suspect now that you have a dull finish you may have gone threw the clear in some areas. Wet sanding in general is 2000, 2500 and 3000 grit paper.

It also requires a machine buffer like an rotary to remove the sand marks.

Depending on what you want as the outcome, I would see if there is a good detailer in your area, with experience that can help you, or respray the bumper.
 
Beemerboy said:
David,

Your flirting with disaster, if you are wet sanding with no experience, IMO practicing on your car is not the place to start. 600 grit sandpaper is way to aggressive to use on the clear coat. I suspect now that you have a dull finish you may have gone threw the clear in some areas. Wet sanding in general is 2000, 2500 and 3000 grit paper.

It also requires a machine buffer like an rotary to remove the sand marks.

Depending on what you want as the outcome, I would see if there is a good detailer in your area, with experience that can help you, or respray the bumper.
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+1

While you may not have gone through the clear coat, you definately took a good amount of it off. Here is the problem you have are faced with

600 grit is incredibly coarse for paint.

With a machine polisher and a heavy duty compound it can be difficult to remove 3000 grit marks from paint, so you are going to have to resand the area several times with finer and finer grits to level the surface and give you a fighting chance at polishing it by hand.

Here is what I would do if I were you.

Apply the touch up paint, small thin coats, and allow to dry between coats. After your final coat, also to dry for at least 24 hours (48 would be better) as the touch up paint is going to continue to shrink as it out gases. After it is fully cured.

Sand just the touch up area (to the best of your ability) with 2000 grit until it is near level with the rest of the surrounding paint. You can wrap the sand paper around something like a round pencil or pen and carefully file away at just the touch up paint.

Once it is near level, blend it into the surrounding paint by sanding the whole area with 2000 grit (wet).

Then resand the area with 3000 grit (wet). Again go lightly on the surrounding paint.

Now you will need to polish the area to a shine. Grab some terry cloth towels and Meguiar's Ultimate Compound and get to work. Polish using medium pressure and some passion until the gloss has been restored.

At this point the best you can do is really hope you didn't overly thin the surrounding paint and you don't strike through to the base coat.

 
David, if you dont mind me asking, where are you located? There may be someone here locally who can help you.
 
David, got any pictures where you sanded with 600?

Not to worry .At least the 600 will give you a much better adhesion for the new paint .If you went through the clear just paint over it .

Like you said if your not happy with the results just get it painted professionally.

We all here tend to be perfectionists and something that looks rough to us may be acceptable to you.

Its a bumper and they tend to get trashed .My bumpers been scraped up/touched up twice now and Im living with it because I know it will just happen again.
 
Todd Helme said:
+1

While you may not have gone through the clear coat, you definately took a good amount of it off. Here is the problem you have are faced with

600 grit is incredibly coarse for paint.

With a machine polisher and a heavy duty compound it can be difficult to remove 3000 grit marks from paint, so you are going to have to resand the area several times with finer and finer grits to level the surface and give you a fighting chance at polishing it by hand.
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Did you mean 600 grit ?With some effort I dont think the 3000 grit would be hard to polish out by hand at all.
 
ca.detailchick said:
Did you mean 600 grit ?With some effort I dont think the 3000 grit would be hard to polish out by hand at all.
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It depends on the paint system. I have had a fair share of paint systems where 3000 grit is difficult to remove completely. Restoring the shine was easy, but completely eliminating all traces of sanding marks was still a time consuming process.
 
muaythainoob said:
I'm located in Bayside, NY. I will upload some pictures tonight when I get home. Thanks for all the advice guys.
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I don't know where thats at but if I know Andrew of big A is in new york some where call that guy he can help. Just ignore any noise coming from your tire when you leave its probably a tape ball stuck to it :rofl
 
Ok here are the pictures. Lighting is not that great but I hope you see the dullness from the 600 grit. Yup that's what we call a rookie mistake?

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