Walked out to my car after work the other day and there was a nice little scratch on the driver's side rear quarter panel. I just got this are repainted from a door ding, so it was very annoying.
It was through the clear coat and some of the paint, so really it needs to be repainted to look perfect, but I can't spend the money on that right now, so I decided to see what I could do with some touch up paint.
I first tried just some compound by hand and that didn't do much at all.
Before I used touch up, to smooth it out, I did some wet sanding. I started out with 1500 then went to 3000 then 5000. I don't think the 1500 was necessary and probably wouldn't use it again (I thought it was actually 2000). This didn't do much to the appearance, but got some of the edge off of it.
Next I started with the touch up paint. Some of the areas were about as thin as the point of a toothpick, so it was pretty difficult to get the paint on well. what I ended up doing was leaving a little extra on and let it dry over night.
The next day I came back with the 1500, but folded on the edge of a credit card and very carefully tried to sand just the built up touch up paint. I then did the same with the 3000 then 5000. After this I went over the whole area with the 3000 then 5000.
To finish it up I used my porter cable with menzerna Fast Gloss with a yellow LC pad and then Super finish with an Uber green pad.
The end result came out pretty decent I think. I could maybe go back and get it a little better, but I feel like I may end up making it worse instead of better.
I'm open to any tips or anything from professional detailers as this is the first scratch I've touched up like this.