So this showed up on the front fender after cleaning the car yesterday. Yes I'm pissed. No I don't know how it happened. [&:]

What can I do? This isn't just some little 1" hairline. It's a 6-7" long nasty monster of a scratch. I've tried the fingernail trick and I think part of it went through the clearcoat and part of it didn't. I have some scratch x but I've never used it before. Worth a shot?

See the attached image.


[IMG]local://upfiles/83519/96BB9A1F444A417A876EE0AC7E31F5F2.jpg[/IMG]

 

sorry bud, that looks like it went through the clear. scratcx will help with the parts that didn't make it all the way though. work it in on a foam applicator pad by hand until it turns clear, then remove with a microfiber. a polisher is always better, but in this case it doesn't look like it's going to help much.

you can always use some touch up paint and wet sand it, but a polisher would def. be required for this type of scratch - even then it's at an awkward area

 

This sucks. I was afraid it was going to get ugly.

Would a pro detailer be able to fix this? Or is it worth it to just have the whole fender repainted for around $300?

 

a true professional could touch it up, wet sand and polish to get it around 95%. it's hard to find a professional that really knows what he's doing, though.


i'd probably get it resprayed or live with it. be sure to find a reputable shop to do the paintwork, as painting can be a very easy thing to mess up, especially on black, it can be a hard color to match

 

Well I tried the toothpick trick but the scratch isn't wide enough for that to work well. The toothpick kept sliding out. Plus, I had a hard time getting any paint to transfer from the end of the toothpick into the valley of the scratch.

So I taped off and used the touchup brush. And as SVTBill warned me, it didn't turn out all that great. While there is some improvement the fact is that a black line still sticks out just not quite as much as the white line of the scratch.

So at this point I'm either going to live with it as is for a while or see if I can get just this one spot wet sanded by a detailer. Long term plans will be to repaint the fender but it makes sense to wait on that both because fundage is limited for me ATM but also why not wait and let the fender take some more rock hits and that sort of thing before going to the expense of repainting.

 

Auto Zone carries a scratch repair kit for about $19. You fill the scratch with duplicolor then light sand once dry. Next you use a buffing cream to get out the fine scratches then a finisher to polish it up. Follow the directions and it will be pretty much unoticeable. Only reason I say that is because you will always know where it was so you will notice it but others won't. It worked great for me.

 

Seeing as your car is black, you can try to cover it with that coloured wax, I think its by Turtle Wax. Good luck

 

The last thing I would ever do is take dry sand paper to my paint.