Advice on scratch please Photo attached

OxiMoron

Can anyone advise the best way of going about repairing this scratch, The paint has actually chipped off and i was wondering should i be sanding down flat or should i fill.
I have a matching paint touchkit coming next week but am afraid of bodging this.

The garage has quoted 250 euro for this as they say it needs the whole panel spraying.

Any advice please?

Plug

*Looks at paint doctor*

Bigus

Because its confined to such a small area , touch up paint in the correct colour would take the real bad look off it. (even a black marker would distract the eye until you can afford to get it repaired properly)

BanzaiBk

I'd be going for a re-spray it there was clearcoat failure, black is a really unforgiving colour to blemishes.

doctorchopper

touch up paint kits are for small stone chips, to get anything near a good job you will need to a proper sprayer to sort that one out

OxiMoron

OK, so looks like too big a job for a novice. I'm just concerned as the garage said they have to spray that whole rear panel and i'm nervous they will leave it with a visible edge if you know what i mean.

Owen

Plug wrote: »

*Looks at paint doctor*

*Looks right back*

You'd need to sand off the rough edges, and skim filler on, and then reshape that wheel arch. You'd prime that, put base coat on the affected area blending it into the surrounding paint, but you probably would need to lacquer most of the panel - without seeing a full photo of the side (And my Saturday afternoon brain thinking it's a Merc, but not being sure) - there could be a crease/swage line near the top of the quarter panel. If there is, you can stop you're lacquering there and polish it to blend it - but I'm sure the bodyshop knows that already, as they've told you it all needs to be be painted (By painted, they're referring to the entire panel needing some sort of work, as opposed to it all being painted black).

OxiMoron

Yeah, well spotted, Merc sports coupe C180.
So, Leave it to the experts you recommend? I've never done anything like this before so worried about messing it up as it's the only mark on the car.
Transanite Blue is the colour.

robtri

this is defo, a leave it to the experts job.....

250 not too bad a quote for a full panel re-spray...

partyatmygaff

You're probably better off leaving it to an expert. It's not impossible to do it yourself but you'll need to put in a whole lot of effort to get it looking good.

If you do decide to DIY, here's a quick rough guide.

1. Sand it with a rough grade of sand paper while wet followed by a finer grade of sandpaper.
2. Mask off any unaffected areas.
3. Clean the area with acetone
4. Apply filler and wait for it to cure
5. Sand filler with fine wet sand paper until it is in the correct shape of the wheel arch
6. Spray a primer, wait for that to dry
7. Spray a few very light base coats allowing each to dry fully
8. After the base coat has completely dried, spray two thin coats of clear lacquer
9. Once the lacquer has dried polish and buff the entire area surrounding the repainted area until the area appears reasonably uniform.