First Scratch + Blemish

[timothyjay]

They do, although for some reason, my local dealers, and even some online retailers do not have my color - Lunar Silver. On their system, it's marked as discontinued so I had to look for it online and good thing Keenan Honda had them in stock so I purchased 2 just in case.

Do you know if the dealer sells these? Just got my first blemish also

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[Hondadude88]

Ok good to know. I hate the first blemish. It's saddening

 

[CivicMichael]

Oh no, I royally screwed up my chip touch-ups! I think I'm going to have to take it in to a professional detailer now to clean up my mess. I used a combination of the Honda touch-up tool and this video:


He recommends wet-sanding the touch-up paint to level it out but the wet-sanding step seemed to destroy my paint's finish. I wasn't too worried at first since the video says you can just buff this out, but no amount of compounding, polishing or waxing got rid of the mess I made. Now I've turned a 1mm chip into a fist-sized disaster of micro-scratches! I used the Meguiar's DA Power tool with their Ultimate Compound, Ultimate Polish and Ultimate Liquid Wax along with their appropriate foam applicator pads for each. It seemed to help a bit and you can hardly see it on a cloudy day unless you're really looking for it - it feels very smooth to the touch - but if you shine a light on it (or I imagine if it's in the sun) it looks really awful.

Hardly visible in ambient/soft light:

Looks HORRIBLE with strong LED light shining on it (after two applications of Compound, two steps of polishing and a layer of liquid wax):

Another dumb thing I did was apply the clear-coat after the touch-up paint sanding but it went on all smeary and rough so I quickly tried to wipe it off with a paper towel so I could start over but it was already mostly dry within a few seconds (even in my cold garage) and I made an even bigger mess. The video recommends mixing the clear-coat and paint together but this isn't really feasible with the Honda touch-up kit so I'm not sure how to apply the clear-coat without making it all bumpy or at which stage. The instructions on the package aren't terribly detailed. I wet-sanded the messy layer of clear-coat again to smooth it out so perhaps this scratching is just in this extra layer of clear-coat and can be removed somehow? Next time, I'm just going to fill the little chip with the paint and dab a tiny bit of clear-coat and if it leaves a small bump, at least it would look as awful as this!

I'm quite embarrassed about this screw-up but I hope my mistake can help others avoid the same distressing situation.

 

[mechatune]

@CivicMichael Damn that's bad. I wouldn't trust myself with sanding/wet sanding either. If a pro detailer can't get that out, time to save for a respray.

 

[CivicMichael]

@mechatune I normally just pop in a dab of touch-up paint and call it a day but I wanted to try to make it flawless with the sanding technique. I've learned my (painful) lesson and will leave this sort of thing to the pros next time, or just deal with the small bump from the basic touch-up paint repair. A couple of shops quoted me $75 to attempt a repair so I'll give that a shot...otherwise it's $500 to repaint the entire door!

 

[Rvenger]

CivicMichael, you did the same exact thing I did to my 2015 Chrysler 200 trunk lid. I over coated clear after I touched up, then wet sanded. What happened was you took the clear off the surrounding areas. I paid $75 from the dealer to repair mine which they resprayed a little base coat and blended the clear in. They basically touched it up the spray method which shops will try and sell you on an entire panel respray which is never really necessary if they are skilled.

I guess we all have our own issues, I can't keep people away from dinging mine. :\

 

[CivicMichael]

CivicMichael, you did the same exact thing I did to my 2015 Chrysler 200 trunk lid. I over coated clear after I touched up, then wet sanded. What happened was you took the clear off the surrounding areas. I paid $75 from the dealer to repair mine which they resprayed a little base coat and blended the clear in. They basically touched it up the spray method which shops will try and sell you on an entire panel respray which is never really necessary if they are skilled.

I guess we all have our own issues, I can't keep people away from dinging mine. :\

Thanks, @Rvenger How did it turn out after they sprayed it? Is it still noticeable or pretty much like new? I honestly don't expect them to make it perfect, but if they can get it close for $75, I'll be happy. Just to be clear, for your trunk lid, they just sprayed clear coat and not paint? Do you know if they did anything else to polish/smooth it out? Thanks so much for your help.

I took it in to one repair shop today and the guy was a total d*ckwad. As if I wasn't already pissed off enough about this situation, he starts off by saying "ahhh, look at the mess you made" then asks me what I do for a living (I figure he's making chit-chat), so I tell him I'm a video producer and he says "don't quit your dayjob". I felt like telling the condescending jerk to F-off but of course I'm too nice and shrugged it off. Then he proceeds to question if I actually have a turbo in my car after he sees the Canadian turbo decals on the side, as if accusing me of just sticking them on there even though I don't have a turbo. Then I start telling him the process I followed which caused the scratches and he cuts me off and says "I don't want to hear anymore." Then he proceeds to start booking me in for an appointment so I ask if he can give me a ballpark quote first and he scoffs at me and huffs and puffs before begrudgingly giving me a number. Needless to say, I cancelled that appointment and will try another place tomorrow.

 

[Rvenger]

It turned out pretty well but since I put that heavy coat of clear over and wet sanded, you could see the impression where I touched it up since the body shop tech said that he couldn't sand it any further. He explained if he were to take more paint off the surrounding areas, it would have sanded straight to metal and then it would be an entire respray. He used a little base coat then clearcoat blended when he sprayed it. I had a white Chrysler 200 so white isn't as noticeable on imperfections either.

I would personally go the $75 route and see the outcome before a respray.

 

[CivicMichael]

Thanks @Rvenger I just got back from the detailer and what a pleasant experience! For anyone in the Greater Toronto Area, I highly recommend the team at The Detail Pros in Brampton! They got my mess cleaned up incredibly well and you can only see a slight bump where the original chip was (which might go down a bit after the extra touchup paint dries). I'm very happy with the results and to make things even better, they only charged me $25! The owner spent at least half an hour giving me loads of useful tips and tricks on how to keep my car looking good and recommended some professional products they sell. I was so thrilled that I ended up buying some pro cleaning supplies (a super premium drying towel, some pro tire shine product and a few other little things) and I'll be coming back in the fall for their high end paint protection package. This is such a big load off!

The detailer suggested that we should never use the clear coat part of our Honda touchup kits. He said the best thing we can do is just carefully fill the chip a bit at a time with the paint and just leave it with a slight bump since the paint will shrink a bit as it dries.

 

[Rvenger]

Great outcome! Pics?


For future touch up purposes, mix the clear with the paint together and use the method above on the video. Do not paint over the chip, just fill it with a tooth pick, let dry, then fill it again until it levels with the rest of the paint, then buff.

 

[CivicMichael]

I just took a quick snap in the garage with a powerful LED light shining on it. There are still some minor swirl marks that are visible when this intense light is shining on it but it came out even better than I could have hoped:

Before:

After:

 

[reversals]

I'm not much of an expert on paint repairs, but that looks incredible. Glad you got it taken care of, @CivicMichael

 

[CosmicSilver]

I found a small minor scratch today near the rear license plate, Will using a bit of polish minimize it?

 

[jbatman1080]

just scratched the side sills of my car. smh. i was parking and didnt know there was a high ground/soil sticking up and it scraped the sills but it was pretty much the soil that did it so i cleaned it out but there was some scratches on the side skirt (you cant really see them but it bothers me.) might just get someone that knows how to polish paint do it for me.

 

[CivicMichael]

I found a small minor scratch today near the rear license plate, Will using a bit of polish minimize it?

I'm not very knowledgeable in this sort of thing, but I recently polished my whole car with the Meguiar's DA Power Tool and Meguiar's Ultimate Polish and I didn't notice much difference in the minor scratches and swirl marks in my paint. As a side note, one of the detailers I took my car to said I should never use the DA Power Tool on metallic paint but the other guy didn't seem to think it was so much of a problem so I'm not sure if I should be using this thing on my CBP Civic.

As far as the polish goes, I think compounding is supposed to be better at removing scratches and other minor scuffs and marks. I tried compounding the scratches I referred to in my previous posts as well as a small scuff mark on my hood but it didn't do much to fix this. I had to take my car in to a pro detailer to remove the wet-sanding scratch marks and luckily they were able to fix it. I'm learning that there are many different types and levels of scratches that one can get, ranging from the minor scuff marks that can be buffed out with a bit of wax, to some that can be compounded, and even some that only the pros can fix...all of which are extra noticeable on black paint! I think I'm going to leave the more serious paint repairs to the pros from now on.

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