Advice on some paint scratches

Hi as the title says,
I have have some scratches.
Was hoping for someone to point in me the right direction

So I ordered a DA polisher kit with all their liquids and not to advertise some other company's thing, my friend recommended me to use either a 'magic eraser' or just some general 2500 grit sandpaper- letting me know both would abrade the paint and get the job done.

So anyway,

The bumper one doesn't catch on my fingernail 90% of the time, and seems to be really nothing more than
clean the car and dry it-> spray lubricant --> sandpaper/eraser ->compound-> use the DA polisher

But the front is messy with the fact that it goes from the scrape you see, down to the lowest corner of the car. Quite a few scratches down there but they're barely noticeable. It's not too much of a priority except the noticeable whites. The rest sort of blend into the giant grille so I'll take that. Hard to explain but a SUV drove right by and hit that corner from below the headlight down to the last bit of the front bumper. Catches on my fingernail the more you travel down. BUT, the white scrape really seems to just be on top of my paint.

This seems more difficult but would you all say, it's the same idea?
Can I do this with a 6.5" set of pads

Any advice for a newbie appreciated.

You don't want to abrade anything, unless absolutely unavoidable and necessary. Especially that you can't tell your abrasives to only work on the transferred paint material, and not on your car's "native" clear coat/paint.

You should rather try removing as much as possible with some kind of solvent first. First try an APC (which most likely won't do anything - but none the less, you should try it), and then with a stronger (>25% or possibly even >50%) IPA solution. If that doesn't work either, you might even try acetone - even though of course you should always test a small spot first (possibly also on an area of your paint, which is not directly visible from the outside), to check whether it doesn't do more damage to your paint, than good.

You should only try any kind of abrasives then, when none of the chemicals work. And even then start out with the mildest one - which is definitely neither a 2500 grit sandpaper, nor a magic eraser. But something like a polish or a correction compound.

Well, at least that's how I would approach any scratches I'm not sure how deep they run and what they actually consist of.

And unless you absolutely have to, you don't want to perfectly level the scratched surface and make the scratches perfectly disappear either, but just diminish them so much, that they won't pop right out from the rest of the paint, and will be hard (but not impossible) to spot if you know exactly where to look for them. Because then everybody else won't be able to see and spot them either - especially that they won't know where to look for it. And because the more of your paint you abrade, the less room you'll have for other corrections down the road.

PS: In your first picture I think I see a body line, which you most likely won't be able to correct, because all the paint is gone from there, and you're down to the bare metal or primer. And on the second one, the widest part of the scratch also seems too deep. If the scratch is gradually deepening, it might not catch your finger, and still run very deep in the end. But honestly, it's very hard to assess from just these two photos, because they are very small, and because you took them against a random background, instead against a solid (preferably dark) one, where it would be easier to separate what's reflection and what's the paint damage.

Interesting, perhaps you can also try going over it with carnauba wax with microfiber pad to remove any paint transfers, I agree with many of the suggestions go with the least aggressive method and see which works in your situation, than afterwards go with a polish


Sent from my iPhone using Autogeekonline mobile app