Ok here's the story. I was rushing to school and finally made it into the parking garage. When I tried to park my car, I went in a bit too quickly and accidentally scraped the wall post right beside the parking space. Here's how it looks like:



The question is, is there a way I can fix this myself at low-cost? There's no dents or cracks, it only looks like paint transfer. Or would it be better off to bring it to a body shop? Let me know what you guys think, any thoughts is appreciated.

 

take some fuel on a rag and rub the transfer off. clean off the fuel with some dish soap and take inventory of any real damage. gl

 

Wow lgear that worked like a charm! Thanks. There's some slight scratch marks left over, any good recommendations for a scratch remover solution?

 

you can try scratch x, or a polishing/cutting compound first. If it's more severe, perhaps wet sanding/repolishing will help

 

Don't forget to use some glaze before polishing to fill in the scratches as much as possible.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk9Pcjgb1z8

 

Here's the after pic:



There's a couple, deeper scratches left but barely noticeable. I might do wet sanding in the near future to remove other scratches as well. But overall, it looks a lot better than before. Thanks for all the help!

 

wow big difference, hardly noticable now

 

Hey 350Gee good job, what a difference. As to the wet sanding etc, you might want to consider the old adage, about quiting while you’re ahead!

There’s a detail shop across from the Pilates studio I go to and I’ve had them fix the odd rock chip while I’m class. Some time ago I did something similar to my rear bumper. One of the guys there pointed out that a scratch/scuff on a urethane bumper will tend to have a raised bit of material along both edges of the scratch, that makes it look more pronounced than it really is. (Probably need a magnifying glass to see). What he did was use a specially formed sanding block to lightly sand off these bits, dabbed a tiny amount of color into the scratch and then a tiny amount of gelled clear-coat like substance over that. The heat generated by his buffer, seemed to dry, harden and integrate the repair with the adjacent paint. All in all a perfect repair. It sounds complicated, but in reality only took a short amount of time out in parking area in front of the shop. These guys are super-duper to me and just like the rock chips didn’t charge me anything for the work.

 

Need a close up picture of the scratches first to determine the optimum step to take. But if the scratches are light, then go buy Scratch X 2.0 by Meguiar's and give it a try. If it's medium, then you might have to use a buffer with some polishing compound. You should only wet sand as the last resort. What you want to accomplish is to remove as least of the paint as possible...

Waste of money

 

Yeah I just got my car two days ago, and already someone(In a PT cruiser no less) smacked my driver side with their door. It left a nice little maroon chip, and my car is silver, so the would the fuel just take that paint off?