Deep Tailgate scratches

[Julesh]

My Dad has a black Silverado 2500 Pickup. It's a work truck and it's seen a lot of abuse. He recently took a trip to visit a friend who has a classic car business and now he's on a kick to clean up his silverado now that he is retired.

It has some white scratches down into the paint at the top of the tailgate, one scratch is almost 1 foot long, and his main focus is to remove those. Remember this is a black truck. I wish I had pics, but I don't right now. He lives 60 miles from me. Anyway, I'm sure some of you know the type of tailgate scratches I'm talking about. Pretty common I would expect.

He wants to use an old craftsman buffer.
It's at least 15 years old and it's definitely not dual action.
Now I have never took a machine to paint. But I know that this buffer is probably a bad idea... hologram city for a newbie like us.

First question is, is it even possible for a newb to remove these? I doubt it could be done with that buffer. But let's say with a dual action porter cable? Or does it have to be wet sanded and a new clear coat applied for scratches that are, I'm assuming since they are no longer black, completely through the paint like that? I doubt we could tackle this, since we are newbs at machining paint. So any opinions there would be appreciated!


Also, it has had coke spilled in the interior. So I'm thinking a brush and some OPC?

Thanks guys. My old man has never taken good care of his cars, in fact you would say that his truck is trashed, so I want to help him out a bit with this one. The interior is disgusting, the paint is swirl city, and lots of scratches. But at least it is garaged now. I might even break down and finally get a porter cable, but only if there is a reasonable expectation of success.

Thanks in advance for any help and sorry for the stupid questions. I take good care of my cars, so I've never had to deal with a trashed car. So I need some professional advice :-)

[opie_7afe]

be a good excuse to buy a nice da polisher and some products from autogeek! if your fingernail catches in the scratch its probly way too deep to buff out so best fix would be dr.colorchip or get some normal touchup paint(not the spray kind) lay it into the scratch(clean scratch with some APC then some isopropyl alcohol) wet sand the paint so the paint is just in the scratch,then i would spray some clearcoat into a container and repeat first step using the clear and not the paint...and your opc will work to clean the seats just spray, let it dwell,brush it gently so you dont mess up the fibers, then you can blot it up using a towel or use wet/dry vac... good luck to you!

[Julesh]

Thanks! So I guess the idea is to lay the DR colorchip in and then wetsand it down flat and then compound?