scratches!

[MrCoffee]

I have a few small scraches that are ddep enough to show white. I was wondering if its possable to get touch up paint and fix these. Or does that make it look even worse. Or Should I just go have the dealer or a bodyshop do it, and will it look like it just got off the assembly line if I get it done right? Not a whole repaint, just some touchup

[2001 Green machine]

you can get the touch up paint to match from the dealer. pull your paint code from the rpo sticker. all you do is feather the edges of the scratch to make it smooth. if you have an airbrush spray 3-4 light coats to color match. if not apply sparingly until you get a match. prep is most important here,and waiting for paint to dry between coats. good luck.

[fbody4life]

don't use touch up paint... it's a ***** to work with and afterwords it looks 10x worse. (from experience) [img]graemlins/crybaby.gif[/img]

[Shirl]

I can almost guarantee that the scratches are only in the clear coat and you should be able to get them out without touch up paint. Do you know how to wetsand and use a buffer? If not, email me.. I'll explain further. Or take it to a shop and have em' do it.

[Birdie2000]

Well, unless your car is white, the exposed white usually means that it went through the basecoat as well. It could also be the color from whatever you hit as well, but not always. Sometimes, if they're not reaaaaly deep, you can simply use rubbing compound and some elbow grease to get them mostly out. If you can feel a groove with your fingernail, then chances are the area needs to be sanded as well. As Shirl said, wetsanding and then polishing can help this, but depending on how far it goes down, you might have to actually repaint the area. You can either have this done by a shop or do it yourself, depending on your confidence, equipment, and budget. It's not that difficult to do given proper instruction, and can yield excellent results. It is much cheaper to do it by yourself. I have done body work on a fair number of cars now, and it's not difficult at all just to sand out some scratches and slap a coat of color and some clear on. However, I don't recommend doing this if you don't have the proper equipment, spray cans really aren't that great. As far as the touch up paint goes, I wouldn't recommend it for scratches. I'll only look worse. The only time I'd ever use touchup paint is if it's a rock chip or something that goes down to the bare metal, as the touchup paint will prevent it from rusting. It'll won't look very hot, but will at least keep out the rust. Hope this helps.