Someone Just Scratched Your New Car – Now What?
You’ve just exited the store and are striding confidently towards your new car when you notice something isn’t right — the paint is SCRATCHED! You look around, hoping to see the culprit, vainly wishing they were still around so you could vent your rage. Then, you walk up to the scratch hoping it will “rub-off”. Alas, that doesn’t work either. What do you do next — get out the touch-up paint?
For God’s sake NO! The sound of the words “touch-up paint” always make me cringe.
Unless the scratch is HUGE, touch-up paint in the bottle is a bad idea. It’s hard to apply (unless you’ve got experience) and it’s usually overkill. The good news is that there are some methods that will remove or greatly reduce the appearance of the scratch on your new car, and they’re surprisingly inexpensive.
The best way to fix a light scratch is called “wet sanding”. Essentially, a paint pro will do an EXTREMELY light sanding on the scratch which will reorganize the paint/clear-coat molecules and make the scratch “disappear” — provided of course the scratch isn’t too big or too deep.
You can find out if your new scratch is big or deep with a couple of simple tests. When you gently pass your fingernail over the scratch, can you feel a bump? Does the scratch stretch over the entire length of the vehicle or of an individual body panel? If the answer to either of those questions is “yes”, then you need to see a body shop and you may need to call the insurance company. Big or deep scratches can be expensive to fix, but not always. Make sure to check around.
If the scratch is light, your local body shop should be able to fix it up for less than $40. Make sure the shop you’re going to us has a written guarantee and that you understand it. Usually the person repairing your car will tell you what it’s going to look like when they’re done.
With all repairs, nothing works 100%. There’s a good chance that the local body shop will remove most of the scratch, but often times a small scratch remains. Relax. You’re probably the only one that sees it because you know where to look. You can be happy that it looks a lot better than it did before.
You've just exited the store and are striding confidently towards your new car when you notice something isn't right -- the paint is SCRATCHED! You look around, hoping to see the culprit, vainly wishing they were still around so you...