Scratch removal attempts on a 2009 car.........

Scratch removal attempts on a 2009 car.........

Author
Discussion

After_Shock

Original Poster:

8,751 posts

227 months

Friday 1st May 2015
quotequote all
Decided to attempt a bit of scratch removal techniques on my 2009 black Ford Focus, been a few years since ive tried this so the Focus is an ideal test bed mainly due to the fact the previous owner never cared for it so the paint is in varying states of quality (if it goes wrong im not fussed!) plus its had a couple of resprays. The resprays are handy as the repainted areas are typically a much thicker paint than the factory finish.

The first area I attempted was on the bonnet, this is a repainted area of the car and after attempting to machine polish some very deep bad scratches out the below picture is what im left with. Now im under no illusion the majority of this wont come out its simply too far damaged and not enough paint left to get a good finish but its a good experiment.



Having given this area a good work over with some abrasive sand paper this is whats left:



Needless to say doesn't look too clever, gave this a work over by hand first with some strong cutting compound, then machined it with the same and as a quick final stage a finishing polish again by machine to get the below:



Must admit was surprised how much of it actually came out, its far form a perfect finish however certainly takes your eye off what was a very bad area.

Now on the side of the car which is original paint (much thinner) two bad scratches are present, the top one much worse than the lower one.



With this being a thinner paint I gave it a going over with a much less abrasive sandpaper, the results looking terrible as usual below:



Even after sanding the worse of the two scratches above was clear it was not going to come out completely, below after the same process of hand polishing then machine polishing:



The worst scratch is still slightly evident which ive tried to catch in the light below:



But all in again pretty much gone and certainly takes your eyes off it.

Edited by After_Shock on Friday 1st May 11:57