I saved this customer about $2500 and having to leave his car at a body shop for a week or more.

January 2, 2024

Diary of a Paint Chip Repair Craftsman: 12/22/23

I saved this customer about $2500 and having to leave his car at a body shop for a week or more.
In all fairness, you probably wouldn’t take your car to a body shop to fix these things. There are several small issues. A body shop would want to respray each panel, and maybe the entire car, which would, of course, be overkill.

I don’t think a car detailer would be able to get rid of these issues unless he was very experienced. Many of the things I fix are somewhere in between what a body shop would do, and a car detailer. I consider myself a paint guy.

I was called to this customer’s home for two main reasons, and I found a third issue that I fixed as a courtesy.

The first is a scratch along the door. It’s about 8 inches long. It’s not deep, but deep enough that buffing won’t fix it.

The second is much more severe. The customer said a kayak fell on it. It’s fairly bad scuffed and scratched.

The third is something I happened to notice and was able to wet sand out pretty easily.

Before :

Scratch on Tesla 3. Needs to be wet sanded. — #1. Scratch on door. About 8″ in clear coat only

#2. Scuff on back bumper. Easily fixed with wet sanding and polish.

This is the main reason I was called out. The vast majority of this will go away. You'll still see it from some angles, but not nearly as well as before. — #3. The worst damage. A kayak fell on it.

None of these issues are fixable with touch up paint, although I did use some paint on the front bumper. There’s very small section where the paint was scraped off from the kayak.

All three issues I mainly wet sanded and polished. This is a very delicate process. In the 20 years I’ve been doing this I’ve burned the paint on a car three times and haven’t done it in at least 10 years. I learned my lessons.

Burning happens when you sand too much, and you start to ruin the good paint that is left. If you’re working on a scratch, it’ll start to make it bigger and wider. There’s no way to fix it if this happens beside respraying the entire panel – usually needs a body shop.

To keep this from happening it’s not only critical that you use the correct grade of sandpaper, but also that you don’t go too long or press too hard.

After pic.