New here (obviously)

[Lydia]

Hey y'all! I'm new to this forum (as I'm sure you can tell). So here's a little intro post I guess...I have a 1999 chevy s10 pickup truck that is green with white racing stripes. I know it's not anything spectacular, but I like it anyways. I came to this forum to hopefully learn how to better take care of it, because the people that had it before me didn't take good care of the exterior and interior at all (fortunately for me they took good care of the engine) and the driver's side of the bed has a whole lot of scratches in the clear coat, and little flecks of latex paint that I haven't figured out how to remove yet (I think the previous owner was a painter because there are also some scratches on the back edge/corner of the roof where they propped their ladders against when they transported them...I guess they hadn't heard about ladder racks ). Hmmm...I don't know what else to put in this post so I guess I will end there before I bore y'all too much

[Mike Phillips]

Hi Lydia,

Welcome to Meguiar's Online!

We'll do our best to help you get your S10 back into tip top shape.

As for the latex paint, the first thing to try is detailing clay, hopefully this will remove the paint flecks. Sometimes you just have to do it a very archaic way and that's to remove them with your fingernail or what's called a plastic razor blade.

Here's a link to detailing clay,

Quik Clay System



You'll probably want to clay the entire exterior of the car, this will include painted panels and the glass. Detailing clay remove above surface bonded contaminants and restores a smooth surface.

As for the scratches, sometimes scratches can be too deep and cannot be completely removed, a lot of times however they can be improved to the point that you cannot see them with your eyes, check out the before and after pictures in this thread after ScratchX was used.

I did it all by myself! I love Scratch-X.

Here are a couple of related threads that will help you...

What it Means to Remove a Scratch

How To Remove Swirls By Hand

How to remove a defect by hand with ScratchX

What it Means to Remove a Scratch

Circles or Straight Lines?

Meguiar's 5-Step Paint Care Cycle


And if you think you might want to share some pictures of your ride, then read through this...


How to put pictures into your posts

[gb387]

Welcome to MOL! We will sure try and help you get your truck looking its best. Lots of good info here and lots of good people willing to help.

[Mark2]

Yes I have been a member here for less than a year now and I have learned alot here. My car looks better than ever

[Lydia]

Thanks for the welcome y'all! And thanks for the suggestions and links, Mike! Maybe while I'm here I can also learn how to detail a motorcycle. A friend of mine wants me to detail his '93 Honda Gold Wing, and my Dad wants me to detail his '00 Honda ST1100. I already did the Gold Wing the best I could with the techniques I know and the products I have (neither of which are very good) but hopefully here I can learn better techniques and learn which products to use!