Removing Minor Scratches and Improving Scuff Marks

First of all I apologize for the long hiatus. It has been raining almost every weekend for the past one and the half month. There are a few things that I wanted to work on but were hampered by the poor weather. Let us hope for more sunny skies ahead.

So, back to the topic. It was about 3 weekends back and I was driving on a rainy night. Out of a sudden, my car hit something and got it lodged underneath. It appeared to be some left-over debris from an earlier road accident, I guess. It looked like a corner piece from a broken bumper with some metal brackets. That debris not only broke my license plate and damaged my front bumper but it was lodged under the front of my car. It was dark and raining and I could not see clearly. Trying to dislodge it caused scratch wounds on my hands as the debris is made from fiberglass. Luckily, a good samaritan helped me to dislodge it. I am very thankful to him. I was lucky enough as there seems to be no serious damaged on the undercarriage.

After a quick wash, the damage did not look too severe.

There were some minor scratches and some deep dents. And obviously, the debris was blue in color. I did not noticed a spider making a cameo until I post this entry. Hello there!

Frankly, the damage is not obvious but unable to wash the blue paint away triggered me to put some effort into it.

One has to be realistic here. The deep dents would not go away, unless I use some putty and areas where the paint has stripped off could not be "polished" away, unless I use some touch up paint. I do not intend to do that. I just wanted it to look less obvious. So, I decided to grab my bottle of Meguiar's Scratch X 2.0.

According to Meguiar's, the product is recommended for isolated scratches and blemishes. And it could be worked in by hand. According to Mike Phillips from Autogeek, Scratch X sits below Ultimate Compound in terms of abrasive level. Read more in Meguiar's Online.

One might ask, why not use Ultimate Compound? Well my approach is always to start from the least aggressive method. So, with an applicator pad and some generous amount of the product, I worked it in.

After some muscle power, this is how it looks.

Not bad at all. Well, as I mentioned earlier, one should have realistic expectation. I do not expect the dents to go away. In fact, I am very impressed on how it turned out. And since this is at the lower lip on the front bumper, it would not look obvious. After using Scratch X, one should seal back the area with either a wax or sealant for protecttion.

That is it for this post. Comments are welcome.