So I finally got around to erasing the scratch on my parents' minivan that I put on there backing out of the driveway two weeks ago. Overall, I think I did well enough. I succeeded in reaching the limited goals I set for myself, but I now believe that this is a task that I wouldn't do for others unless I got paid for it.
Fixing scratches is a pain in the ass. This site by Popular Mechanics seems to be the be-all and end-all -- I mean, it's Popular Mechanics! If you can't trust them, who can you trust?
But looking through other sites, I really didn't understand what the site recommended I should do to remove the scratch. I got the sandpaper. What I didn't know is that you don't just wax and polish. Oh no! First you use a rubbing compound, and then you use a polishing compound, and then you use a swirl remover, and then you wax it. Shit man, before researching all of this I thought polishing and waxing were the same thing.
What else I didn't know? Chances are the scratch really isn't a scratch. There's a possibility what I saw didn't go through the paint, but the layer above it, the clearcoat. That coat makes the car shiny and, I guess, protects the paint from scratching. If that's the case, the job is a lot easier. If the scratch goes through the paint ... well, I'm not going to know that until I sandpaper.
So after work yesterday I went to get the minivan washed and bought the last few items to complete this project -- the polishing compound, the anti-swirl shit, and black shoe polish. Some of the sites I saw recommend you put shoe polish in the scratch so that you know when to stopsandpapering. I didn't quite understand it, and when I began, I totally forgot about it. But since I paid three-and-a-half bucks for it, I thought I might as well use it.
So I went to the other side of my car and took out the shoe polish. And it was tough to dab it onto the scratches, so I just put it around the scratches, which were on the driver's-side door and the driver's side power door. Then, I sand paper. And unlike what I saw online, the shoe polish doesn't come off. I did all I could withthe sandpaper, but it still wouldn't fucking come off.
After a half-hour I steppd back and saw all these black streaks on my parents' minivan. I panicked. How the hell am I going to get all this shit off the car? And if I can't, how am I going to explain this to my parents? But I dropped the sandpaper and just decided to remove the shoe polish with one of those non-scratch micro-fiber rags they told me to buy. Polishing and waxing be damned, I needed this shit off the car. And I finally did -- and, surprisingly, quickly.
The repeated polishings and glazing and waxing, however ... although I got done with everything in less than 90 minutes, I was slowly losing my mind with crouching over and treating something that was at shin-level. It didn't help that I was in flip-flops, nor did it help that I got stung by mosquitos on my right temple and my right foot.
I still don't know if I did it right. The instructions say you should let the compound dry to a haze. What does a haze look like? It also says that you should apply the compound with one towel, remove any excess compund with another towel, then dry it all off, presumably with a third towel. I don't have a dozen towels. I had five and I was reusing them all at the end, and I don't know if I just fucked up the minivan because of that.
When I was done, the scratch was mostly gone. However, I could see a deep depression at the end of the scratch still there, indicating that when I hit it with my car, and I was running into it, hence the deeper scratch. So I really do have to paint that part over -- with primer and clearcoat, too. At least I know that.
However, the buffing didn't go so well. I took a step back and saw nothing reflected back on me in the place I was doing all the work. It's scary to walk around the car and see my reflection all the way through until I get to the spots I was waxing and see a huge smudge. I run my hands over the body of the car; it's rough at the places I didn't work on, yet it's quite smooth to the touch at the places where there's no face staring back at me. Is it the shoe polish? Don't know what else to do except polish and wax again, and I might do so when my parents are gone in, say, Thanksgiving.
Hopefully they won't notice that the reflective clearcoat stops at the driver's-side doors. Don't know what I could say if thye do.
In short, most of the scratches are gone, and what is left I think I know what to do to fix it. The waxing to the point where I can see myself staring back at me is something I don't get, but maybe it won't matter.
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