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Was wondering how you guys repair a deep scratch? Any recommendations for products? For those of you who have meguires ultimate compound, what is the proper technique in using it. I don't have any rotator machines so I will be doing this by hand.
jdt, try the TurtleWax Scratch Repair Kit. You can find it at CT or Walmart for about 20$ and has repaired the odd deep scratch (to the metal) I've had on my past Lexus vehicles with near professional results.
(We have a thread on scratches here you may want to post in as well.)
You'll need Lexus touch up paint and the process is fairly simple though to get it looking 95% + invisible, you'll need to take your time and fill the scratch a little more than flush so you can then wetsand it down with the proper papers and polishing compound the kit provides.
I have read (but never used) that Dr Colorchip does an excellent color matching with Lexus paint. I bought Lexus touch up paint (Starfire Pearl is a 3 stage paint) for a previous RX that didn't come close to matching. After some investigation I discovered that all they sold me was the base color, which was a much brighter white. They never mentioned I would need the 2nd stage and clear coat to get the color to match. Maybe I should have known on my own. Make sure you get what you need to make it match.
Where is the scratch? If it's in a bad spot, I would talk to a paint shop to see what it would cost to have them touch it up. I would think it would be pretty difficult to get it close to right without some sort of polisher.
I have read (but never used) that Dr Colorchip does an excellent color matching with Lexus paint. .
A couple of years ago, I bought one of the Dr. Colorchip kits. I considered it to be a waste of about $50.
I know that different people have different opinions about what constitutes a satisfactory repair/touch up, but the results that I got with the Dr. Colorchip product were not ones that I considered to be satisfactory. I only tried using it on a couple of small stone nicks. After using the Dr. Colorchip, if I looked at the results from, say 25 feet away, they were okay, but, if I looked at them from a closer distance, I considered them to be much worse than what I could get with traditional Lexus touch-up paint used with care and with good technique.
The key to getting good results with touch-up paint is to fill the area to be repaired as closely as possible to the level of the original paint. If the new paint is either higher or lower than the original paint, that area will catch the light differently from the way that the surrounding area does, and, in some light, it will look lighter than the rest of the finish, but, in other light, it will look darker.
It is much more difficult to get satisfactory results using touch-up paint with some colors than it is with others. For colors like metallic silvers, metallic golds, pearl whites, etc., it is especially difficult to get a good repair because, even if the paint seems to be a good match, it is likely that the metallic flakes will not be lying in the same direction as the original factory paint, and that is what can cause it to look lighter or darker than the surrounding areas in different light.
I admit that I can be obsessive about fits and finishes, and I've become quite good at using touch-up paint. Even with good technique, to meet my standards of a good repair, I can get such results on small areas, like stone chips. On the other hand, I've never seen a larger scratch that has been repaired with touch-up paint done by anyone that I would have considered to be a satisfactory repair. For damage larger than stone nicks, the only satisfactory results that I've ever seen have been achieved by refinishing the panel. To my eye, the results achieved by trying to repair scratches with touch-up paint look worse than the scratch itself.
You'll get better responses in the detailing forum, but I can tell you that if the scratch is deep (down to the base coat or worse, the metal substrate) there is no product out there that will remove the scratch. You will need to clean out the scratch and re-apply clearcoat or paint to repair. I've had good success with the Lexus OEM touch-up pens.
02-26-17, 06:32 AM
Deep scratch repair?
