No car owner has ever been happy after finding a scratch on the paint of their vehicle. Car scratches can be annoying, and they definitely represent a sudden expense that, sometimes, insurance companies might refuse to cover. This is why it is important for us to learn how to avoid them or even fix them, depending on how bad they are. Here are some key aspects you should keep in mind when you find a scratch on your car’s paint.
Quite often, we are the ones responsible for having scratches on our car’s paint. For many of us, washing our car has become a weekend tradition, and we might even have the perfect routine already laid out. However, if we always begin by spraying water on our car to soften the dirt, we might want to consider changing this. The best way to avoid scratching our car when we wash it is by hosing it down with soapy water instead. This will allow the soap to get rid of the dirt, and then rub the water off using a sponge.
Another important aspect to keep in mind is that modern paint is definitely different from that of yore. In the past, vehicles came with thick layers of paint, and these layers contained pigment all the way through. Therefore, scratches used to be shallow, and would not really penetrate the paint, so repairing the damage was quite simple. People would only have to polish the affected area until it was smooth again, and it would pretty much eliminate any scratch from the surface of their body paint.
Nowadays, vehicles come with a thin layer of paint, which is called the base coat, a more economical option than a thin layer. On top of the base coat, we have the clear coat, which is the shiny part that protects the base coat from rain, road grime, exhaust fumes, bugs, and any other harmful element. This makes auto body paint more susceptible to scratches and damages, so we need to be more careful than before.
If one of our friends suggests that all we need in order to get rid of car scratches is some kind of polishing compound that is only abrasive, and a machine buffer in order to polish the scratches off, we might be making a huge mistake. In order to successfully get rid of any scratch following this method, we need quite experienced with the use of these machines. However, the best way to avoid causing more damage to our vehicle, we should leave it in the hands of a professional auto body repair. This way, we’ll make sure that our car is taken care of by experts.