Scratches, Chips and Swirls on car. Need Advice

[b1lloo]

Hello everyone,


Greetings from Australia. I have a Ford Probe '95 in red paint. I got it from the previous owner with some scratches and chips on it. There is a section on the front bumper where the paint is chipped and is quite visible. Apart from that there are some scratches around on the car and swirl marks. I have already tried taking them out with T-Cut scratch remover, and Meguiar's ColorX.
Also, the spoiler is pretty bad and the back door of the car has many scratches on it. Please find the pictures attached and I would love to get some advice as to how to go about fixing all of that up. I'm thinking if the spoiler needs to be repainted, is it just going to be cheaper to get the professional to do some touch-up around the car as well or just get the spoiler repainted and do the rest myself. What would you advise?


Cheers everybody.

Pictures here

[Murr1525]

Re: Scratches, Chips and Swirls on car. Need Advice

I dont thin your pics quite showed up?

[b1lloo]

Re: Scratches, Chips and Swirls on car. Need Advice

you need to click on the link mate

[Selectchoice]

Re: Scratches, Chips and Swirls on car. Need Advice

Hi,

Not a lot of good news for you. All of the areas shown in your pics will require repainting. The scratches are too deep for a polish or compound to remove. Also the rear wing has clear coat failure. Nothing can be done to repair it short of a repaint.

[b1lloo]

Re: Scratches, Chips and Swirls on car. Need Advice

I'm not looking for a really good paint job. I'm just looking to get it fixed so that you can't notice it much if you're standing at a lil distance. I do realise that the spoiler and the back door need repaint, but what about the other scratches? I was hoping to touch it up but I'm not sure what's the steps involved. I was thinking maybe wet sand it, then touch it up, wet sand it again to level it, put some clear coat on it and then polish and wax it. Or maybe cut & polish it then touch up, wet sand, clear coat, and polish and wax. Is that ok?

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Scratches, Chips and Swirls on car. Need Advice

As you already know, the areas where the clear is literally peeling off can only be corrected with a repaint. But the areas with all those little cracks in the paint are in the same predicament and they can't be fixed without a respray. The deeper scuffs in the bumper around the auxillary lights are so deep that the only way to fix them is to sand the area smooth and shoot new paint. There are a few other places where some scratches look more isolated, although fairly deep nonetheless.

If you're thinking of doing any wet sanding you need to consider what it takes to remove the sanding marks. That is extremely difficult to do by hand and almost always requires the use of a rotary buffer, wool pad, a good compound and a fair bit of skill. Have you done any of that before? Do you have plans on repainting the entire car? If so, then this might not be a bad time to experiment a bit and try your hand at the process since anything you mess up will be corrected by the body shop anyway. But if you have no intention of repainting the car and you have no experience with advanced processes like wet sanding and rotary compounding, then you actually run the risk of making things look worse.