Hi all,

Two separate issues here. I have a small (1/2 cm diameter at max) spot of rust right above my windshield, I assume from some rock when driving on the highway. I also have a few scratches (some light and one that goes through the paint -- can see black underneath) right behind a wheel. I guess someone scraped up against my car at some point... the bastards.

Anyway, as someone who feels incredibly uncomfortable using any sort of sandpaper on a car, anyone brave enough to walk me through what I need and how I might take care of these things? I'd rather not have to go to a shop for something so tiny but at the same time I'd like to take care of this.

 

Since you have rust, it's possible it's already worked it's way under the surrounding paint, so unless you are willing to sand down to metal, primer and spray - your best bet is to just do a simple touch-up until you can spend the money on a shop doing the work.

As for your scratch, you can pick up some light polish from any of the high quality product vendors online - I'd recommend ObsessiveDetail.com because Justin offers good products & his customer service is great. That scratch, it looks like you can make the surrounding area look like new again by hand, get some touch-up paint, a fine art paint brush or a tooth pick to apply the paint in thin layers until it's built up to the area around it. Get yourself some 2000-3000 wet grit sand paper & a flexible sanding block - a bucket of water and a spray bottle of water to help rinse away debri as you sand, but before you do that take into consideration that scratch is near a body line. That means your clear coat is going to be thinner in that area, increasing your chances of having a break through and really making things ugly. That's a tough area for a scratch, you should just consider repairing the scratch with touch up paint the best that you can and not wet sanding. It is one of the scratches where you have to choose the lesser of two evils until you can afford to have it repaired by a shop. Hope this helps.

If you do decide to repair the scratch and wet sand, try your best to not build up much higher than the surrounding area. Our cars have little clear coat from the factory, soft clear coat at that so it doesn't take much sanding at all to break through and expose paint - then it'll look really odd.