Today a customer contacted me about damage on his car. He lives in downtown LA, where parking is hard to find. The only option is to park on busy streets with lots of foot traffic.

It’s almost inevitable to have your car damaged under these circumstances. It’s either bumped from the front or rear by someone trying to parallel park, or someone simply keys your car out of malice.

This customer had just gotten a raise and was excelling in life. He bought himself a new high-end BMW to celebrate, but the next morning when he got into his car for work, he found that someone had keyed it—a 2-foot scratch down the side.

He texted me pictures of the damage hoping I could help. I can usually get a good idea of what I can or can’t do from photos. In this case, I wasn’t very hopeful, but the alternative was out of the question for my customer. There are two ways to fix a scratch: you can either respray it, usually requiring a body shop, or use touch-up paint, which is less expensive but doesn’t always eliminate the scratch completely.

There are pros and cons for each:

Paint Touch-Up:
Pros:

• Much less expensive
• Makes the scratch much less visible (depending on technician’s skill)
• Can be done at customer’s location
• Maintains quality of existing paint
• No matching issues (assuming you have correct touch-up paint)
• Preserves car value (respraying can lower value as it suggests accident damage)

Cons:

• Doesn’t always eliminate the scratch completely
• Can be risky if technician lacks wet sanding experience
• Results depend heavily on technician skill

Body Shop Respray:
Pros:

• Will look perfect if done correctly

Cons:

• Much more expensive
• Might not match other panels
• Body shop typically needs car for a week or more
• Prices vary wildly

Via text, I told him I could definitely improve its appearance but would need to see it in person for a better assessment.

When I saw the scratch in person and felt it with my fingers to assess the depth, I became very confident I could make it look great. We agreed on a price of $225. I got started but quickly found my assessment was slightly off. I thought I could wet sand the vast majority of the scratch away but discovered it was deeper than anticipated. Wet sanding and polishing only made a slight difference. I had to quickly change my approach and went to the secondary method—painting a very small bead of paint along the scratch.

This requires great care. A key scratch is generally only 1/64th of an inch wide, and painting a line freehand that small is nearly impossible. The paint thickness is critical, and the amount of paint on the brush is crucial. Plus, as you slide your paint along the scratch, there’s less and less paint on the brush, so you need to spin the brush as you move perfectly along a jagged line.

I successfully completed the repair, making the scratch nearly invisible. The cost at a body shop would have been about $600 and would have devalued the car. When selling a car, savvy buyers or dealerships use a paint depth detector—a small device that measures paint thickness. If it’s higher than industry standards (if the door, for example, has been resprayed), it’s assumed the respray was due to accident damage, even if it was only done to fix a minor key scratch.

You can see a video of the process here: Me, fixing a BMW i4