Scratches not going away...

[wing commander]

I would not perfect the paint on a daily driver that is just going to go back through the automatic car wash again? You are maybe better to just go easy and preserve clear thickness.

[Shermer321]

Agreed that it isn't worth going through the clear as it is the daily driver for the wife. But I wanted to buff as nice as I could and CQuartz so she can wash at home (easier to maintain). If I take a couple passes of 2000 grit over the scratch it buffs out great with the ClearCut. Just sanding a car is a scary thing. Would like a step up cutting pad (thin wool foam), or the M101 compund since it will cut longer.

ClearCut does get there, but it takes 3 or 4 attempts to clear it up. Then I still have to follow up with Essence. Maybe they sell M101 locally and I can try that first.

[Shermer321]

Another on/off topic question. I got the big stuff buffed out using CarPro ClearCut and now have a bottle of Dr ColorChip to fill in the road chips on the hood and a couple small ones around the panels. But my big question is when to apply it? Before Essence? How long do I wait to polish? Then the time to wait before Cquartz. The kicker is I wanted to get it almost done prior to driving it to the body shop Tuesday...

[Calendyr]

If the scratch is visible to the eye from a very feet away, it's usually too deep to remove with a compound. For those I always wet sand. Compounds are great at removing swirl marks and very fine scratches. Deeper than that you will be removing too much clearcoat on too big an area and it's gonna take a long time to do. Also if you are too agressive with it you can burn the paint.

What I would suggest is to get fine sand paper (either 2500 or 3000 grit) and sand them out. If you are new to it, the trick is to sand very little at a time. I would start with 10 swipes, clean the area and evaluate. If it's still them, do 10 more swipes, clean, evaluate, and repeat until the scratch is gone. You will know from the first scratch how many swipes it took and you can do about the same for the other ones afterwards. Super fine sand paper with little pressure removes very little paint so it is safer to do than actually compounding like crazy. Just make sure to use a block and apply even pressure so you don't dig in the paint. I like to use the very small blocks that are sold by Geyon for applying coatings. They are like 1 inch diameter and 3 inch long. Wrap the paper around it and work it.

Once the scratch is gone, your compound will have not trouble getting the shine back.

The only thing I would not use this on at the present is Mazda paint. I have seen many of them have 50 to 60 microns total thickness. For Mazda, no paint correction or sanding is acceptable, there just isn't enough paint on the vehicle to do it. On a Hyundai like yours, paint thickness usually ranges from 100 to 130 microns, so you have some wiggle room to remove deep scratches.

Last thing, if after doing say 4 or 5 rounds of sanding, the scratch is still there, leave it be. It should be coming out in the first 2 or 3 tries. Going after scratches that are too deep will compromise your paint. You might not strike through it, but you will be leaving too little to give good protection. The exercise will still make the scratch much less noticable so you do get benefit from removing it partiallly.

Oh and very last point, stay away from edges and raised body lines. There is very little paint there so it's super easy to strike through, and removing sanding marks on those areas is also dangerous. So try to keep about an inch distance from either.

Ok, I think that's all

[Shermer321]

If the scratch is visible to the eye from a very feet away, it's usually too deep to remove with a compound. For those I always wet sand. Compounds are great at removing swirl marks and very fine scratches. Deeper than that you will be removing too much clearcoat on too big an area and it's gonna take a long time to do. Also if you are too agressive with it you can burn the paint.

What I would suggest is to get fine sand paper (either 2500 or 3000 grit) and sand them out. If you are new to it, the trick is to sand very little at a time. I would start with 10 swipes, clean the area and evaluate. If it's still them, do 10 more swipes, clean, evaluate, and repeat until the scratch is gone. You will know from the first scratch how many swipes it took and you can do about the same for the other ones afterwards. Super fine sand paper with little pressure removes very little paint so it is safer to do than actually compounding like crazy. Just make sure to use a block and apply even pressure so you don't dig in the paint. I like to use the very small blocks that are sold by Geyon for applying coatings. They are like 1 inch diameter and 3 inch long. Wrap the paper around it and work it.

Once the scratch is gone, your compound will have not trouble getting the shine back.

That's basically what I ended up doing and it was much quicker.. the problem areas tended to be right behind the wheel wells.

Any help on.the timing between Dr ColorChip, essence and Cquartz? I am assuming I cannot use essence before touch-up paint because it contains some ceramic.

[Calendyr]

That's basically what I ended up doing and it was much quicker.. the problem areas tended to be right behind the wheel wells.

Any help on.the timing between Dr ColorChip, essence and Cquartz? I am assuming I cannot use essence before touch-up paint because it contains some ceramic.

You should always do you paint touch up in the following order:

Wash - Decontaminate - degrease - paint touch up - let dry as suggested by the manufacturer+25% safety time - if very little time as passed you can go to essence then coat. If a lot of time has passed re-wash first but no need to decontaminate and degrease again.