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Keeping it Shiny: Don't Let Scratches and Scrapes Ruin Your Paintjob

Let’s face it, your car is your pride and joy and also one of the most expensive things you own apart from your home! For that reason you want to keep it in the best condition possible, particularly if you want to sell it and upgrade in the coming years. Taking care of your car’s paintwork is really important, mainly because those little nicks and scratches you can easily collect with daily driving can sometimes become more serious issues if they corrode and rust.

Of course, if you put your car in the garage and never go anywhere, you won’t have a problem but that kind of defeats the point of having a car in the first place. There are plenty of things you can do to fix minor and superficial scratches to your car’s paintwork without having to book it in to a body shop for an expensive fix! Modern cars usually have highly durable paintwork that is designed to last for years to come but it’s almost inevitable that over time, the paint will be damaged by fine scratched caused by other drivers or even by scraping something against the door accidentally while opening it.

Car Scratch Removers

These days there are plenty of really good and affordable products you can use to remove or conceal superficial scratched on a car’s paintwork. Most of the kits you can buy come with everything you need to remove scratches and often also contain a polisher and wax to bring your repaired scratches back to a shine to completely match the rest of your car’s paint finish.
All cars are coated with several layers of paint when they are made and the layer at the top is called the clear coat. Most of the car scratch removers you can buy are only capable of removing scratches to this clear coat layer and so you need to be sure they aren’t too deep to be fixed by yourself.
Here are the stages in fixing a scratch on your car:

ABRASION

Before you can start to fix the scratch, you have to make it worse! This is to ensure a completely smooth finish. By sanding down the scratch, you’ll remove any uneven marks caused by the incidents which will allow the color to absorb into the sanded area more effectively for an invisible finish.

PRIMING

Once you have used abrasive paper to prepare the surface around the scratch, the next step is priming. A primer is used to completely prepare the surface for painting and usually comes in aerosol form. Generally, you prime the surface two or three times, allowing it to dry between applications and then you can sand it down once again to get a totally smooth finish. Then you’re ready to add the color!

COATING

This is where you apply the pigment color to your base coat of primer. You can generally apply coating in as many applications as you need to get the desired finish and each one will seal the pigment and protective layers underneath. In between applications you can sand the surface with really fine paper of around 1,500-grit and this slowly brings the color to its original factory gloss and finishes your work with a shiny coat.

RESULTS


It takes a few hours – usually overnight – for your handiwork to dry and then most scratch remover kits contain a rubbing compound which brings out the shine even more. Once you have finished fixing the scratch on your car and it’s all dry, it’s a good idea to wash and wax the whole of its bodywork as this blends your touch-up work really well with the original paintwork. Ultimately, fixing annoying scratches on your car is much easier than you think!

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