RE: Scratches in truck paint

[firefighterjake]

It was bound to happen sooner or later . . . and I'm blaming this on my GPSr that routed me down a goat path of a dirt road . . . but my nice, new truck now has some scratches. It looks like it is just the clearcoat . . . any suggestions on how to fix this . . . or can it be fixed? Right now it doesn't look bad until you get up close to the truck . . . and yeah . . . I know . . . it's a truck and it's supposed to have scratches . . . I just didn't want to have scratches this soon.

 

[mayhem]

Orbital buffer, a bunch of clean pads for it, a few hours in the shade and do the 3 step swirl/scratch remover, polish and wax. I use Meguiar's when I have the time, but you can probably use any of the products out there.

 

[joefrompa]

You'll need a random orbital buffer. Light brush going against your car is going to leave swirl marks/spiderweb looking scratches in the clearcoat - easy to remove. If it looks like the car was keyed, those aren't going to change. I'm guessing your truck is black, red, or blue.

Get a random orbital or borrow one from a friend - you'll want a 6" version. Porter Cable 7424 is a classic, also Griot's Garage makes an excellent one (basically same specs as porter cable).

Wash your car, dry it, then clay bar it (plenty of tutorials online). Then use a LIGHT machine polish. This is the most basic chemical and physical abrasive, and the lightest of all the polishes. It's also the safest. But this isn't Meguair's Scratch-X or any of those (those are more serious).

Polish the entire car using the orbital. Clean it off and polish again if the marks aren't all the way gone.

Clean it off, apply a high quality sealant (not a wax, since you aren't a car nut waxing your car 4x a year a sealant lasts much longer), and call it day.

Cargeek.net has tons of great advice and good prices on all the products. Also look up OCdetails.com

If you need to buy all the products yourself, you are looking at a $250-300 investment in everything from a dedicated wash bucket, wash mitt, car wash soap, chamois for drying, clay bar kit & spray, random orbital buffer and polish, and a good sealant. It'll take you about 4 hours to do the whole truck with this process and it'll look showroom nice when you are done.

You can also pay a professional detailer ~$150-250 to do this and they should also clean out on the door jambs, detail the interior, and shine your engine, wheels, and tires as well. And it'll be good for ~6 months.

Joe

 

[firefighterjake]

You'll need a random orbital buffer. Light brush going against your car is going to leave swirl marks/spiderweb looking scratches in the clearcoat - easy to remove. If it looks like the car was keyed, those aren't going to change. I'm guessing your truck is black, red, or blue.

Get a random orbital or borrow one from a friend - you'll want a 6" version. Porter Cable 7424 is a classic, also Griot's Garage makes an excellent one (basically same specs as porter cable).

Wash your car, dry it, then clay bar it (plenty of tutorials online). Then use a LIGHT machine polish. This is the most basic chemical and physical abrasive, and the lightest of all the polishes. It's also the safest. But this isn't Meguair's Scratch-X or any of those (those are more serious).

Polish the entire car using the orbital. Clean it off and polish again if the marks aren't all the way gone.

Clean it off, apply a high quality sealant (not a wax, since you aren't a car nut waxing your car 4x a year a sealant lasts much longer), and call it day.

Cargeek.net has tons of great advice and good prices on all the products. Also look up OCdetails.com

If you need to buy all the products yourself, you are looking at a $250-300 investment in everything from a dedicated wash bucket, wash mitt, car wash soap, chamois for drying, clay bar kit & spray, random orbital buffer and polish, and a good sealant. It'll take you about 4 hours to do the whole truck with this process and it'll look showroom nice when you are done.

You can also pay a professional detailer ~$150-250 to do this and they should also clean out on the door jambs, detail the interior, and shine your engine, wheels, and tires as well. And it'll be good for ~6 months.

Joe

Hmmm . . . looks like it was keyed vs. spiderweb scratches . . . doesn't sound good then???

Truck is gray.

 

[joefrompa]

If it looks like it was keyed (which usually looks like you can see a layer of paint and a layer of primer before bare metal, there's no fixing that. The scratch goes through the paint.

if you look at the paint and it looks like spiderwebs are laying on top of it, those are marks in the clearcoat. Those can easily be removed. Between those two extremes are kinda a case by case basis.

If you drove by loose brush, it probably didn't key the car. It takes a good amount to actually cut through the paint (albeit Nissan isn't exactly the highest end of the paints either).

If you don't think you'll go through bad situations again anytime soon, I'd suggest visiting a top notch detailer (look for one the local BMW/Porsche/etc. dealership recommends) and asking if they can get them out.If you want, ask them how much they'd charge to JUST do the sections where you have those scratches. Might be $50-80 (they still need to do all the steps).

You can also take a macro photo (real close) of the scratch at an angle so I can see if it went through the layers, and I can comment on it.

Joe

 

[kettensäge]

I would bet it looks worse than it is.
Try some hand applied polish or cleaner wax first and use microfiber towels. You may remove them or reduce them to your satisfaction.
If you get all or most of them out yourself you will save some $$ on professional detailing.
If not, you won't loose anything except a few bucks for polish.


I used to detail for a living and machine paint buffing is an acquired skill, proceed with caution.


My daughter brought her brand new Focus over for me to look at. Her little brother wrote his name with mud across the driverside of the car.
After cleaning it up you could clearly see the lettering in the clearcoat.
I cleaned it up with some hand applied and buffed clearcoat polish, no trace left.
Clearcoat is soft, but being so it polishes out easily also.

GPS is wonderfull, mine had me on 2 miles of dirt road last week when I attempted to visit a local county fair. I changed the "shortest route" option to "quickest route"
Hopefully that keeps me out of the back country.

 

[firefighterjake]

If it looks like it was keyed (which usually looks like you can see a layer of paint and a layer of primer before bare metal, there's no fixing that. The scratch goes through the paint.

if you look at the paint and it looks like spiderwebs are laying on top of it, those are marks in the clearcoat. Those can easily be removed. Between those two extremes are kinda a case by case basis.

If you drove by loose brush, it probably didn't key the car. It takes a good amount to actually cut through the paint (albeit Nissan isn't exactly the highest end of the paints either).

If you don't think you'll go through bad situations again anytime soon, I'd suggest visiting a top notch detailer (look for one the local BMW/Porsche/etc. dealership recommends) and asking if they can get them out.If you want, ask them how much they'd charge to JUST do the sections where you have those scratches. Might be $50-80 (they still need to do all the steps).

You can also take a macro photo (real close) of the scratch at an angle so I can see if it went through the layers, and I can comment on it.

Joe

OK, I understand your description better now . . . the scratches are in a perpendicular fashion as if someone had keyed the vehicle, but "spider webby" in appearance as you don't really see them unless you're within a couple feet of the vehicle and I don't see any bare metal. Sounds like a detailer might be the easy route.

 

[firefighterjake]

I would bet it looks worse than it is.
Try some hand applied polish or cleaner wax first and use microfiber towels. You may remove them or reduce them to your satisfaction.
If you get all or most of them out yourself you will save some $$ on professional detailing.
If not, you won't loose anything except a few bucks for polish.


I used to detail for a living and machine paint buffing is an acquired skill, proceed with caution.


My daughter brought her brand new Focus over for me to look at. Her little brother wrote his name with mud across the driverside of the car.
After cleaning it up you could clearly see the lettering in the clearcoat.
I cleaned it up with some hand applied and buffed clearcoat polish, no trace left.
Clearcoat is soft, but being so it polishes out easily also.

GPS is wonderfull, mine had me on 2 miles of dirt road last week when I attempted to visit a local county fair. I changed the "shortest route" option to "quickest route"
Hopefully that keeps me out of the back country.

Thanks . . . I may try this route first and pick up some polish and towels to see what it looks like . . .

Stupid GPSr . . . by the time I figured out that it was routing me down a goat path it was too late to turn around since there was no place to turn around and it meant a long drive going backwards.

 

[joefrompa]

I used to detail for a living and machine paint buffing is an acquired skill, proceed with caution.

I agree with this when it comes to straight-drive buffers or hard polishes, but light polishes with random orbitals (and correct pads) it's damn near impossible to screw something up. They don't generate enough heat and the polish isn't hard enough to really cause damage or strip too much off.

I am not a professional detailer. And I am repeating what I've been told by professional detailers as well as griots garage.

 

[joefrompa]

Jake, if you can't see it from a few feet, it's definitely just in the clearcoat. True scratches can easily be seen from a number of angles.

What you are describing is classic "spiderwebs" in the clearcoat that simply occur from any number of things. You may be able to get them out by hand but frankly, unless you are using the right polish and the right towels, it's just as easy to add more swirls. Literally, drying your car will often add light swirl marks (as do machine car washes).

Wash it, dry it, and if you can clay bar the area to remove surface contaminants (you won't even see it, but you've got pieces of iron stuck in your paint from people braking next to you/industrial fallout). If you get some bits of metal on your towel while polishing, it'll just continue to spiderweb IMHO. Also, some microfiber towels are poorly made and will put marks in your clearcoat as well.

If you want your truck looking purdy often, and are willing to do the work, get the right tools for the job. if you don't want to do the work, or just want these minor swirls out of the paint, then ask a detailer to knock them out and call it a day.

 

[nate379]

Bring it to a detailing place and they will have you all hooked up for $100ish. Perferanly one that the guys hardly speak english, cause they seem to do the best job.

chit my Jeep that I have run in teh woods for about 10 years can be buffed out where you can't see the scratches from 10ft away so I'm sure your truck can be cleaned up.