Ok this is my Wife's black 07 Lexus IS250 with some major scratches and swirls. Here are the before and after photos as well as a step by step DIY repair guide showing you what I did and how. I hope this can be insightful for a few brave souls who like to do things themselves. Anyway this is how I repaired her car and then performed an entire exterior detail using my UDM. She had some pretty major scratches on the driver side door going the length of the entire door panel. Much of the scratches went all the way through to the primer and almost all of it I could catch my nail on so they were pretty bad. To make matters worse about a month after her car was accidentally side swiped she pulled into our garage and hit some shelving that scratched the hood down to the bare metal (about 6 medium size scratches). After those 2 incidents I kinda lost interest with regular washes and waxing. I let her take the car through the car wash or simply used a nylon brush :ugh: Needless to say there were a lot of nasty swirls in the paint. Anyway I finally got my UDM and decided I would try to detail her car. Here is what I did. I am not saying that this is a conclusive way for DIY scratch repair & I am in no way an expert or claiming to be one. I am simply sharing with you all the experience I have gained by doing this and hope to pass on some lessons learned.
Ok, I started by washing her car with the two bucket method using a wash bucket and a rinse bucket. I used Dawn Dishwashing soap in the wash bucket because I was trying to strip any remaining wax and dirt off the car, otherwise I would never wash my car with dish soap. I then dried the car and used a Meguiars Clay bar with quick detailer to remove the small impurities that the wash did not pick up.
Now with the car as clean as possible I started with the scratch repair.
I bought some touch up paint from my local dealer for like $8. Or you can order some from paintscratch.com.
I started on the hood. Now unfortunately I started this project when I had no clue what I was doing so right after it happened I put a coat or two of touch up paint over the scratches on the hood without really prepping it at all or putting a base primer coat down first. Oh well! Here is what it looked like:
I then spent the last few weeks putting more touch up paint in the scratches eventually building the paint up so that it was slightly higher than the original paint.
Just my opinion, but I tried using the whole tooth pick thing of dipping it into the paint and letting the paint fill in the crevice from the toothpick and found that it just did not work very well. It was drying too fast and not enough paint was coming off the toothpick. I actually had really good luck using the "Roller Pen" feature that the touch up pen provided. Ok so after the scratches were filled in I grabbed some 2000 grit wet/sand paper and let it soak over night in a bucket of water with a couple drops of Dawn dishwashing soap to help with lubrication.
I did talk to a local bodyshop however and the painter I spoke to said it's not necessary to let the paper soak for so long, he lets his soak for only 10 mins before he wet sands on cars. He also said it does not matter if you sand in only one direction like I read somewhere else. I also had on hand some 1500 grit and 2500 grit paper in case I needed something different. I used a small rectangular school eraser as a sanding block as it was the perfect size for what I was doing. I had also bought a much bigger brick style one that I used later.
Ok now on to the wet sanding. I used the 2000 grit and did sand in and up down motion gently.
Ok it really does not take alot of time or pressure to take off the excessive paint with 2000 grit but then again it's not like you have to be crazy careful either. I used moderate pressure and it took me approx 20 mins to sand down the entire area.
The first time I sanded I stopped once I thought the surface was level but once I buffed it out with my UDM and Menzerna Polishing Compound on a 4" yellow LCC pad I could still see where the scratches had been.
Now mind you it looked 10 times better than before sanding but if you know me, I am a perfectionist.
Ok now if you look at the sanded pics you can see the "outline" of the original scratch which still was slightly visible after I buffed it out (If u stared at it from 3 inches away! :tomato: like I said I'm a perfectionist) Anyhow I touched up another scratch on my driver side rear fender that turned out absolutely flawless. I lightly sanded it until the circle which was left by the new paint over the old was totally gone and blended in with the rest of the panel. I am guessing here but I would say because the scratch was not as deep on the fender it turned out great. I however got the brilliant idea that if I could totally blend away the scratch on the fender I should be able to do the same on the hood so I went back and sanded more of the hood. Now It is my belief that the touch up paint I was given maybe did not match up perfectly with the base coat because even after I filled in the scratches and sanded them down I could still see where they were. Well I sanded alittle more. Then I noticed a small "clear spot" beginning to appear. That spot then began to grow bigger the more I sanded so I stopped. I thought this was odd because I did not believe I had gone through the paint and I was not hitting any metal? Maybe it was the primer I am not sure. I immediately stopped sanding and put some more touch up paint over the spot and then spread more touch up paint over the entire area I was sanding. I then smoothed out the area again with some light sanding and again buffed away the scratches with my Polish.
It never did look as flawless as the fender but still looks really good and way better than before but now I am concerned about UV protection. I am not sure if the touch up paint has any UV protection built into it or not but in either case I may just spray some clear coat over the area for protection anyway. Here are some after pics from a foot or 2 away. You can still see the scratch marks slightly if you are looking for them and stare at the area from 2 inches away, but from a foot away or if you did not know that they were there you would never notice. I also experimented sanding in a left to right motion as well as up and down and there was no difference. The UDM and Polishing compound removed all the scratches with ease.
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