Had a little too much fun driving around the other day and when I backing into my spot, I scraped a little bit of paint off my rear.

Anybody have any good tips/tuts for touching up scratches? Picked up the OEM Honda touch up paint matched for color code and was wondering if I needed to go through the 3 coat, wetsand, clear coat, sand, compound, polish, wax...

Really scared to leave more damage on the car. Don't have an electric buffer so this will all be done by hand.

Any tips would really be appreciated.

 

If this is in the wrong place, please let me know!

 

How deep are the scratches? Pics would be a start. If they aren't too deep, it could just be paint transfer from whatever object you hit. If this is the case (which I am sort of doubting since you didn't scrape another car... you likely scraped wood/cement), there's a chance you could polish it out, preferably with a buffer like a dual action polisher.

If they're deep and beyond the clear coat and actually took some underlying paint off, you could try using touch up paint. However, touch up paint on a relatively large scrape will not be effective aesthetically. Its main purpose is to cover up exposed metals to prevent potential corrosion/rusting. If it is a big scrape that's beyond the clear and paint and you're hoping to get rid of the appearance of the scrape entirely, your only option is a respray of the bumper. Depending on the colour of your car, you may end up with mismatched paint between your bumper and the rest of your car. Black would be easiest.

Doing a 3 stage paint job yourself will NOT be easy, and it WILL show if you're doing a 3 stage touchup. Wetsanding/sanding is not for the faint of heart. If you believe your rear bumper isn't bad enough to warrant a respray, but the damage has gone through the clear and the base coat, do can do this, but do this at your own risk. I'd practice on some random body panels you may have laying around first to get a feel for it. Last thing you want to do is make things worse.

 

i would go to the best detailer/paint correction expert I could find.

let them give you an estimate...they will tell you if its worth the trouble and the cost.


THEN you can decide if you want to try it yourself.

but if the clear coat is through, that cant be corrected and will require paint.

you can NEVER match a professional clear on part of a bumper. just not going to happen. so if its through I would consider a pro.

 

So I scraped into the brick wall that you see on the left slightly. I was thinking I would just do 2-3 coats to fill in, then let it dry and planned to wash and wax next weekend on top of the paint.


So I scraped

 

Yeah I think I'll bring it to a shop and get a quote. I have this ^ and a few other small holes in the front. Thanks for the help

 

looks through the paint all the way. you can maybe try filling in with touch up, then wetsanding smooth and finally compounding and polishing it.

 

Upgrade to sport bumper. It's the only solution.

 

That sucks man. I had a tough winter myself. A rock must have hit my hood square on during the winter. Cause a true chip and now it is rusted.

Then came out of the grocery store to see a metal shopping cart resting on my rear bumper. Sure enough a 4" scrape down to the plastic.

Followed by a snow plow scraping the rear bumper.

Before this i had a crappy Corolla that never got nicked or hit. This winter was not friendly to my car.

 

Yeah I think that's the plan. There's probably going to be haze when it's all said and done, but will do what I can to limit it.

 

Ouch, let's hope that you've already taken all the damage your car will have in its lifetime..

 

There shouldn't be any haze after polishing though

Yeah this winter sucked. something hit my driver side fender and made a nice big scratch front bumper is missing so much paint from rock chips and road salt as well.