Paintwork

[Tom549]

Hi guys

I currently have a 2003 focus tdci in grey.. the colour code from under the bonnet is K1.

I do alot of outdoor sports and scratching my car has become a habbit of mine.. some a the scratches are down to the metal

im looking at selling it and getting a new car in the coming months but dont wanna get naff all for it. and i dont wanna spend loads of money on the paintwork..

any suggestions on what i can do ?

cheers

tom

[karlos1987]

It all depends on how much you want to spend and if you want to spend the hills doing it yourself.

You could give chips away a bell and they will come out to give you a quote. From parts experience they are not that expensive.

Sent from my C5303 using Ford OC mobile app

[jeebowhite]

generally speaking it depends on just how many scratches you have, where they are and so on.

If your car is scratched on every panel in multiple places, then your best bet is a respray - so the question is, whats the car worth, what will you get for it as it is, and what will it cost you to get a full respray!

if the scratches are intermittent, generally clustered together, then chips away could fix these odd few panels for £80 (if its a smart repair) or much to my disappointment, they quoted me £200 (thats after a discount) to get one door resprayed, just because some eedjet decided that my door looked like it hadn't mated with someones key, so they did me the favour...

Alternatively, you could fix it with touch up paint, and chips away could help there. My Kia Cee'd before I sold it, had multiple stonechips and damages, so I touched it up, and Chips Away quoted me £15 to polish the bonnet in a way that would seriously hide these chips (couldnt fix them, but could make them look a darned site more pretty!)

It really depends on the damage. If you post pictures we could help more?

[Tom549]

okay thanks!!

ill post some pics in an hour or so :) got autoglass out today to repair a chipped windscreen -.-

[jeebowhite]

eurk, I hate my chipped windscreen. Almost makes me want someone put a brick through the front windscreen so that it gets replaced, I know they retain most their strength, but when your looking at it from the inside, it does your head in! mines on the passenger side and still catches my attention...

[Tom549]

aye i know right!! mines right in my line of view, however living in the sticks, i hit a lot of flies so they soon make it hidden :D

[jeebowhite]

haha, yeah, blood and guts on the windscreen do make some things look better, human, animal, insect, it depends where you live really :p

I love it when you see someone driving around with a ding in the front, a lump on the bonnet and blood on the windscreen still, and you do have to wonder... animal, or human! (certainly seen it one or twice around here!)

[Tom549]

"ding in the front, a lump on the bonnet and blood on the windscreen still" pretty much describes my car.. had someone go down the side of my drivers side... ive managed to replace the front wing and drivers door but cant find cheap rear quarter(with fuel cap) and rear drivers side door :/

pics should be up now

[jeebowhite]

the boot can be polished out, as can the second pic with your front door in it, and across the doors (pic 3) and above the handle , under the grill would need some touch up paint, but can be polished to a good result, the pic after can also be polished out, the one with the other focus in the background too. The drivers door ding will need some TLC, chips away could definately help with that, I suspect your looking at around £300 at a rought guess? probably the same for the front wing, but to be fair, that might be doable for under £100

All in all, you could probably do a good job on most of that for a bit of elbow grease and a good polish (I am about to go through the same process!) but the one who went down your door will need professional TLC. I would suggest contact chips away, and then take your car to a few bodyshops for some quotes. If you find the right bodyshop, you could probably get that all done for about £300?

[Tom549]

Not all bad news then :) can u recommend a good polish ? Aye the dens and scratches down the side I'll need some help with but the other scratches I can probably manage myself :)

Thanks for the help !

Ps , its a fiesta ;) and my mum got it just as a wrote off my first car (a rather brief encounter with a deer, joys of living in the sticks ) ... " er Tom, I just got a new car, not the best thing u wanna hear after crashing one " haha

[jeebowhite]

haha, my bad, couldnt quite make it out by the reflection :p

polishes vary, but there are a few recommendations, one of which one of the kind fellows of this forum is sending me a bottle of some tomorrow - he highly recommends it! "autoglym super polish resin" is the one that he is sending me so I can offer some feedback over the next couple of days, but if you have a look at the detailing section http://www.fordownersclub.com/forums/forum/9-detailing-your-ford/

There are some recommendations in there. At lunch time I went out to try and do some bodywork recovery, part of that was a grouge in the paintwork, that I have filled out with primer and painted over, I was sanding it downto flatten it off a little, and in doing so I scuffed and scratched the paintwork around it. I used a drop of auto wax polish on it and it covered them all up quite nicely,

There are a lot of recommendations via other forums I have seen which is to buy yourself a good scratch compound (meguires scratch X) and polish the car with this first, then when that has reduced the ugly, then put a layer of polish over the top.

I rarely useT Cut (only as a one off when trying to do bodywork repair) and I used this after I tried to touch up the scratch to my driver door (key damage) And it has helped a lot, but in doing so it took the lacquer off, so hopefully the polish will put the shine back on it, but if you have some around, and dont want to spend anymore money than needs be, then using this in light doses can also help.

[Tom549]

Okay sweet. So I find some auto glym stuff that should do the trick ?

I don't like the idea of t cut or scratch compounds:/

[jeebowhite]

most polishes will work well, its just a case of which works best, and how much elbow grease you need.

If you wait for a couple of days, I can do some work on my driver door and can send before and after photo's with the stuff that I am being sent, and you can buy yourself some of that?

[Tom549]

Okays :) well my dad does alot of work too and he said autoglym is brill stuff.. same with the meguires scratch X, he uses G3 ? - but its the same job.

ill pick some up :)

thanks for all the help bud and ill add b4 and after photos :)

[Tom549]

well i forgot the photos. but ive spent the best part of 3 hours polishing it...

alot of the smaller scratches are either gone(or seem to have) or hidden :) - i think for the bigger ones like the one on my boot, i'll possibly need a scratch compound? as polish isnt doint anything to it.

[jeebowhite]

good result, I just got the polish off the guy from the forum, I was going to go out, but with the clouds threatening to drown me and my car, I will have to skip it today!

You could use T Cut to pull it down and then polish it to finish it up, T Cut is abresive, but if used as a one off and without a machine polisher then you should be able to get a good result - worst case scenario, the panel needs a bit of touch up and spray by chips away - which you would have had to pay otherwise.

90% of the time, if I use T Cut, I have no issues. Last time I did it was on my Focus and I got rid of some horrendous scratches and the paintwork looked great. If I need to use it this time, I will then cover it up with polish and then wax it to get the full sheen back from the bodywork.

[Tom549]

ah right, i havnt really used tcut before.

would you say tcut or g3?

[jeebowhite]

never tried g3 so couldnt say, but you use T Cut as any other polish, small blob on applicator, dab it onto the scratch, then start polishing the scratch and a little area around it, this should spread the paint over the scratch.if you use a small enough amount and are fairly firm, then just keep going until it looks like you have wiped it all away, and you should see the scratch is disappearing.