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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