I have a few scratches on my monte. Slid in some ice and into a bush. There are a few scratches that i can feel with my hand and a few others that are not as deep. Any suggestions on what i can use to remove them? I do not want to paint it again because i like my color. I doubt they will be able to match it exactly.

 

well the best way is by buffing and polishing hard core. especially if you can feel them. if you dont have the means to do that then your going to live with it. they will NOT come all the way out, but the deep ones will be smoother, while the surface (more like towel) scratches should.

long story short your better off taking it to a detail place and have them do it unless you have a buffer.

 

You have a custom color and no picture gallery to show it off?!?!?! [:@] [8D]

There are many scratch removers on the market, but I have not used any of them. I actually am about to because I dropped the gas nozzle when I pulled it out of the filler spout and it grazed my rear fender [:@]. I am open to any suggestions. I hear that Duplicolor and Quixx have good products. Yes, no?

Found this: Link

 

I heard about the quixx also but i dont want to mess up the paint. If i got to a detailing place, will they have to repaint it?

 

Not necessarily. If they an repair instead of repaint, they can let you know your options. They will usually look at it say "Yeah, we can buff that out," or "No, that will have be repainted." Wouldn't hurt to check it out, though.

 

the scratch removers are very extremely stupid to use. they are a downgraded compund and you need heat to get a scratch out. when you buff it heats the clear coat which is actaully a really tough malleable substace. somthing like glass is. but anyhow when it heats it becomes softer and moveable which allows the scratches to move and fill.

 

Excellent metaphor.

I had always thought that the paint job was completely solid and brittle when the clearcoat set via whatever reaction the factory uses to set the paint. I mean, I understood that it was somewhat flexible under heat and pressure (like when a painted panel gets dented and the paint stays with the sheet metal), but didn't realize that the heat from the buffing actually caused the paint to blend back together.

I can't imagine that the cheap buffers like you can get at walmart are very good, but how similar would a cheap buffer (like under $75) be compared to one that a body shop or detail shop would use?

How easy/hard is it to completely burn up and destroy a paint job via buffing using either a cheap buffer or a proffessional buffer?

There's a guy on my block that I've seen buffing his Mack truck (which has an awesome color changing purple paint job), but since he's a long haul trucker I don't see him often enough to ask him about his buffing techniques and equipment.

-Riggs.