Not the updated pics I was hoping to post,

My car got keyed, I am not going to claim insurance (deductible is $1000) and got quoted by "trustworthy" body shop ~ $1100 to repaint front and rear panels and doors. He normally deals with luxury european cars and does good work.

A car detailer with an inhouse paint section offered to fix it for $500 (has been around for 21 years blah blah), by filling in the scratch with paint then wetsand/buff/clearcoating etc.

Is the $500 fix realistic? The $1100 option guy said that it needed to be redone and a sort of "fill and buff" wouldn't be fix the problem properly

I dont need this thread to turn into a "who the hell keys cars discussion?!" please, I need solutions and those .......people will get what's coming to them. btw, having a dirty car at the time, doesn't scare keyers away.

 

Sorry to see your damage, some people just have 'nothing' going through their brains. Your 1k insurance deduction is probably much less than fix on this. $500.00 seems pricey IMO, it's only a scratch that does not appear to have gone through to the metal. I would say $200- $300 bucks tops for this.

 

this one is worse than mine... mine was from the rear quarter panel to along the rear door.

i got mine fixed, but i did it myself. (no clear coat though) if your guy is charging $500 to fix. go for the repaint. you'll still see the fix, it'll be about 50%-70% less noticeable

if you option to do this yourself., here are the steps as far as i can remember

check the scratch first and see if you can buff out as much of it as you can.

1. clean the surface
2. get your touch up paint and put on a coat over the damaged area
3. allow the paint to dry/harden/cure (24hrs in warm weather is recommended)
4. use a 3000grit sanding block and carefully sand down the touch up paint to your stock OEM paint. do some over sanding so you blend your touch up paint line with your OEM paint
5. repeat steps 2-4 as many times as necessary. your goal is to fill in the gap in the paint.
6. use a polishing compound to polish the paint to a shine. (best done with a machine)
7. seal that baby up with some wax.

no clear coat on mine, its been well over 2 years since i did that fix and it's been good since.

 

Druha, I feel sorry this happend to you but I feel your pain. My 2008 ES350 was keyed only 3 months after purchased. The scratch was from the front quarter panel all the way to the rear door. I too was tempted to try the cheapest route. A local body shop offered to try and fix it for about $300 by painting over the scratch with touch up paint and buffing and blending it in. He said it will not be visible from a distance but with the light at a certain angle, you will still see it if you look closely. I finally bit the bullet and had another shop completely repaint the side by $1200. At the end, I'm glad I took this route because the repair looks perfect.

 

Ditto on the repaint. Did you try one of the many scratch remover compounds on the market? Spending $500 and not being happy with the results will only increase the cost to do it right.

 

If your fingernail gets caught in the scratch,it needs a repaint.

 

Sorry to hear about this. I too suggest that you first try the scratch remover to see if it helps. It doesn't hurt to try.

If the scratch remover doesn't work, try SickES350's steps to touch-up and wet-sand the paint. The guy who charges you $500 is going to do exactly the same thing.