scratches

[dadsturn]

Due to my ignorance, my 04 vette has surface scratches all over
the place. They are not so deep that I can catch a fingernail on
them. I have worked with scratch-x but due to the excessive amount of scatches I require something a little more aggressive.
What do you have other than scratch-x for this application to be applied by hand or machine?

[Mike Phillips]

Hi dadsturn,

Welcome to Meguiar's Online!

Your question and dilemma is a common one, let us see if we can help. First I would like to share a little story about a guy on CorvetteForum that always couches his expertise in the fact that he owned a detail shop for years and this is meant to make him look like some kind of authoritative expert.

I used to read his posts but I stopped after I caught him continually stating how soft the clear coat finishes on Corvettes are. What this told me was that he didn't really know what he was talking about because the clear coat finish on all the Corvettes I've worked on, (and that's quite a few), have always been on the hard as glass side of the spectrum, not the soft as single-stage lacquer side of the spectrum.

He was confusing the characteristic of how clear coat paints are scratch-sensitive with paint hardness. Catalyzed, clear coat paint systems tend to be much harder than traditional single-stage lacquer and enamel finishes, that stated... they still scratch easy.

Note: I didn't say all clear coat finishes are hard, lest anyone try to read more into what I've said than what I've really said. We've seen plenty of clear coat finish here at Meguiar's at our classes as well as part of ongoing testing and research that are soft, but generally speaking, most clear coat finishes I've worked on are harder than traditional lacquer and enamel paint jobs I've worked on and Corvettes and Vipers historically have had clear coat finishes that are on the extreme end of the scale as far as paint hardness goes.

The point being, don't be fooled by all of the self-proclaimed detailing gurus posting behind nicknames on all the various discussion forums all over the Internet. Just because they say it, it doesn't make it so...


Now on to your dilema...

We have a forum called, Information Station, if and when you have time, spend some time reading the information found in the sub-forums in the Information Station.

There is a lot of very helpful and enlightening information contained within those Cyber-Walls. For example this,

What it Means to Remove a Scratch Out of Anything!



In order to remove a scratch out of anything, metal, plastic glass, paint, etc. You must remove material around the scratch until the surface is level or equal to the lowest depths of the scratch or scratches.

The below diagram if for paint, the the same thing applies to just about an surface material or coating.



In essences, you don't really remove a scratch, you remove material around a scratch.

Then the big question is, is the material or coating workable, as in can you abrade small particles of it and leave behind an original looking surface. For example, some things you can abrade, (remove the scratch), but you can never completely remove all of your abrading marks, thus you can't really fix the problem, all you can do is exchange one set of scratches of a different set of scratches.

The next questions is, how thick is the surface material you're working on or the coating. You are limited to what you can do by the thickness of these to things, (surface coating or surface material), and whether or not this surface is workable.

Sometimes you don't know what you can so until you try. It's always a good idea to test your choice of products, applicator materials and application process, (By hand or by machine), to an inconspicuous area. If you cannot make a small area look good with your product, applicator and process, you will not be able to make the entire surface look good. It's always a good idea to test first and error on the side of caution, versus make a mistake you cannot undo.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Now if you'll accept the fact that in order to remove a scratch, or multiple scratches, or any kind of swirls, (circular scratches), then what you need is a system that will remove a little paint in an effort to remove the swirls and scratches that won't at the same time instill scratches and swirls. This is where you need a product that utilizes diminishing abrasives like ScratchX.

You've tried ScratchX and like I demonstrate at all of our Saturday Classes, ScratchX is works if you work it. That is, ScratchX is a soft, creamy liquid that feels more like a skin lotion than an abrasive product, in order to be effective, the product must be worked against the finish using the right technique and a little passion behind your pad. You must also work only a small area at at time, about the size of a wash rag or small microfiber polishing cloth and you must almost always apply multiple applications to this small area in order to remove enough paint to level the surface and in essence remove the defects.

Once a person learns the technique for using ScratchX by hand to remove defects out of paint, and once this person realizes how large there car is what it's going to take to remove all the swirls and scratches out of the paint by hand, especially if the paint is hard and thus requires extra applications over each small area... often times this person will want to learn how to use a dual action polisher and let the machine do the work for them.

This is where you're at.

If you want to remove the swirls and scratches out of your Corvettes finish and you don't want to spend the time and energy that will be required to do this by hand, then you're going to want to invest in a dual action polisher, a couple of polishing pads, at least one finishing pad, a cleaner/polish or two (M83 Dual Action Cleaner/Polish and/or M80 Speed Glaze), and a wax.

Then you're still going to want to allocate most of a day to spend your time upfront removing the defects in what Meguiar's calls The Cleaning Step, which is the step in which you will run the dual action polisher over the paint on the 5.0 setting with a cleaner/polish and carefully remove small amounts of paint which will in effect level the surface surround the scratches resulting in a flat finish with no swirls and scratches.

That's the truth.

For a Corvette like yours, to properly remove all the scratches out of all the panels you'll be looking at around 4-5 hours for just the first polishing step. All the other steps will go much quicker, but this first step must be done perfectly or the swirls and scratches will still be there after the last step.

If you're still interested, reply to this thread and we will share with you the next steps you'll need to take.


Here are some more threads you should read to come up to speed on the art of polishing paint...

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1516

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7011

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1516

Especially this one...

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2409

While this Corvette does in fact have soft paint, the process for your car will be the same and the results will also be the same...

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6598