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On a drive home, in mid
July of 2007, my SAAB was egged; four teenage boys were driving around
the streets of highlands, Denver, egging cars from the back seat of a
fourth generation Jetta. I was driving toward them and didn't even see
them throw the egg; I only knew what happened when I heard it hit the
back door. I followed them, took down their license plate number and
gave it to Denver City Police.
Two cars passing each other at 35 is like having an egg hit your car at
70 mph; with this force, its shell takes the paint all the way to the
base metal.
As much as something like this annoys me, there's nothing that can be
done about it other than repair it. This is how to fix such a thing
(this also applies to any sort of scratch or chip in your paint).
Here is the damage (the grey is actually where the paint was completely
removed):
Begin by thoroughly washing the door to remove all egg, dirt, wax, etc.
I cleaned out the damage with a toothpick to ensure it was clean and
dried the area with a microfibre. Once the area is clean, fill the
scratches with SAAB supplied touch-up paint. I use thin coats and build
up the area until the damage is completely filled in and just slightly
higher than the surface. The first few coats I apply are color.
I finish the fill with successive layers of clear.
Let the touch up paint cure for more than an hour and then sand the area
with 2000 grit wet-or-dry sandpaper. This smoothes out the finish and
highlights any low spots. Proceed by applying more touch-up paint
until the damaged area is completely filled. Here is the door,
sanded, with the last coat of touch-up applied (the scratches are not
nearly as deep as they look; this is an artifact of the flash):
When the scratches were filled and adequately sanded, polished the
entire panel using 3M's Fine Cut rubbing compound. This removes the
scratches and blends the touch-up into the surrounding paint.
Pictures of the compound and my buffer are shown below. Nothing
fancy.
The
results look much better than the original scratched area; the color
match isn't perfect, but it works!
And the same results, in the daylight, without the highlighting flash
(and a glimpse of my reflection):
Notes:
The sanding and buffing
should be done by hand. The lowest grit sandpaper you want to use is
1500 grit wet or dry and you'll want to finish with 2000 grit wet-or-dry
with the reasoning that you want to be especially careful not to sand
through the clearcoat or colorcoat. If you sand through the clearcoat or
paint coat (for non metallic colors), you'll have to repaint the entire
panel, which adds a lot of grief to the job! |
