Learn how to repair a deep scratch in the paint of your car. In this case someone keyed my car so I will show you how to remove a deep scratch from that using a touch up paint pen. Fixing scratches in your car's paint is simple and if they are just clear coat scratches it is even easier.
To remove deep scratches you need to clean the scratch, sand the scratch, use touchup paint on the scratch, sand that paint smooth with the factory paint job, add clear coat, and wet sand that smooth with the factory paint. Then you can polish the whole panel and you are done!
Clear Coat Scratch Repair: https://youtu.be/2nYF46P7B2c
Paint Pen: https://advanceautoparts.rt8x.net/voOO3
1000-1500-2000 Grit: https://advanceautoparts.rt8x.net/mD0b7
3000 Grit Sandpaper: https://advanceautoparts.rt8x.net/x0Rbx
5000 Grit Sandpaper: https://advanceautoparts.rt8x.net/QRWea
Polish: https://advanceautoparts.rt8x.net/rABbj
Polishing Pad: https://amzn.to/2YcLJEG
Microfiber Towel: http://amzn.to/1TQK01h
Tape: http://amzn.to/1SEBgtL
Isopropyl Alcohol: https://amzn.to/36dak0H
→ As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
→ Become a ChrisFix Subscriber: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=paintballoo7
→ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisfixit
→ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chrisfix8
→ Website: http://www.ChrisFixed.com
→ My Channel Home Page: https://www.youtube.com/ChrisFix
**If the video was helpful, remember to give it a "thumbs up" and consider subscribing.**
Disclaimer:
Due to factors beyond the control of ChrisFix, I cannot guarantee against improper use or unauthorized modifications of this information. ChrisFix assumes no liability for property damage or injury incurred as a result of any of the information contained in this video. Use this information at your own risk. ChrisFix recommends safe practices when working on vehicles and or with tools seen or implied in this video. Due to factors beyond the control of ChrisFix, no information contained in this video shall create any expressed or implied warranty or guarantee of any particular result. Any injury, damage, or loss that may result from improper use of these tools, equipment, or from the information contained in this video is the sole responsibility of the user and not ChrisFix.

Hey guys chris fix here and today, i'm going to show you how to repair a deep scratch in your car's paintwork. You can see right here. We have a really deep scratch that goes across the entire fender, which was from somebody who keyed the car. They vandalized it.

Now, if you have a deep scratch cause somebody keyed the car, because a shopping cart hit it because you scraped up against something or somebody scraped up against you. Whatever the deep scratch was caused by i'm gon na show you how to repair it inexpensively using one of these automotive paint pens. Now a paint pen like this is around 15 to 20 dollars, and i want you to keep that in mind, because this isn't gon na get you a hundred percent perfect results. It's not going to be like if they re-sprayed the panel the best way to repair.

This would be to sand the entire panel down to remove the scratch and then respray and feather and blend your paintwork into the adjacent panels. Now doing all that paint work comes at a cost. I actually went out and got a quote just to see how much it would cost to fix this panel. Only this panel with this scratch and the total cost would be 775 dollars to do this properly.

At a body shop now, depending on what car you drive in your situation, you might not want to spend all that money to make this a perfect repair. So instead, i'm going to show you how to repair it at home using one of these paint pens and get results that are good enough, get results that are they're pretty good, like you're gon na stand from right about here, two three feet away and you're, not Gon na notice that this is damaged the only way to notice its damage is, if you get up close or you catch it in a certain light, and you look for that scratch. Otherwise, if you stand back here, you wouldn't even be able to tell wonder what let me show you here's the panel right now before we repair it. You could easily see the deep large scratch and here's the same panel after we repair it with the touch-up paint.

The scratch is gone and the panel looks great, so i think that gives you a really good idea of the results you can expect after you're done watching this video and trying it for yourself using the tips and tricks i show you. This is gon na go above and beyond everything. You've seen, i'm gon na show you stuff on how to get this basically to disappear, and we're going to be doing that with four simple steps. First, we need to clean the entire panel to remove any dirt and oils, so we don't contaminate the scratch.

The second step is to prep the deep scratch by removing any and all rust and lightly sanding the scratch to get it ready for the next step. The third step, which is our paint step - this is where we're gon na use a simple touch-up pen to fill the scratch with paint and add a layer of clear coat. And finally, the fourth step is the blending step. This is where we're gon na use some sandpaper and polish to blend our new touch-up paint into the original paintwork.
That way, it doesn't stand out as much and it'll be a lot harder to see that this was ever touched up. So if you follow those four simple steps, you could do this at home yourself and get great results now. Here are all the tools and products you're gon na need again trying to keep it simple and inexpensive. You're gon na need some isopropyl alcohol in this case 70 or greater you're, going to need some soapy water.

This is just dish, soap and water and you're going to need a razor blade like this, along with some tape. It's a good idea to have a couple of microfiber towels on hand, you're going to need a kitchen sponge, 2, 000, 3000 and then 5000 grit sandpaper and then to finish it off some polish and a polishing pad and then finally, you're gon na need one of These paint pens that matches the paint to your car. Now, all these tools and products, i will link in the description below, so you can easily find each one now real, quick before you go out and purchase an automotive, touch-up paint pen like this, you want to make sure it has a couple of features. The first thing is, obviously you want to make sure that it has the base coat the color coat that you're looking for.

So we have our white right there. The next thing very important. You want to make sure that you have automotive clear coat. So if we take this off right here, the bottom part has our automotive clear coat, and that is important because that's going to get us those really good results and then another feature this pen has is the tip right here is good for sanding.

It gets the rust out of the deep scratches and then one last thing: it's very important. If we take a look over here at the front, it shows you the different paint codes that this paint pen covers it's bright white and we need to make sure this matches our paint code for our car. So how do you find the paint code for your car? Well, it's simple to find the paint code for your car. All you need to do is come to the driver's side door, open it up and you're going to look at the door jam stickers located right here and if we take a look at this sticker, you can see it says, paint pw7.

So pw7 is our paint code. Now, let's just say, for whatever reason, you can't find that paint code well on this door. Jam sticker is always going to be a vin. The vehicle identification number, which is right there.

All you need to do is write that down and then call up the car's manufacturer in this case. It's a chrysler, you'd call them up and they could give you the paint code just from the vin. So it's pretty simple to make sure you have the correct paint code, another thing that you might run into as you're buying these paint pens is, should you go after market or should you go oem, but i'm here to tell you just get whichever one's cheaper? You can see the paint pens look identical, that's because the aftermarket actually makes the oem paint, so, whichever one you could buy, that's cheaper go for because they're both the same now. One last thing you should check is for paint fade, especially if you have an older car over time.
The paint on your car is gon na fade because the sun is always beating down on it and, although you might think your paint work looks good, it's not faded over time. It will fade no matter what so to check that find something such as your license plate which doesn't move. This is what you've had on there since the car was bought, and if we remove the plate, you could clearly see there is a difference between the paint. That's been protected and the paint that's been exposed to the sun, which is faded.

Another place you could check is behind the fuel filler door because again this paintwork back here isn't touched by the sun. The sun isn't beating down on it because it's protected, but you could compare it directly to the paintwork right next to it and you can see if your paintwork is faded. In this case, it doesn't look too bad, but you could see a slight difference and the last example i want to give you guys is this right here, because it's so drastic. So, for whatever reason, the taillight bezels on these sn95 mustangs fade a lot quicker than the rest of the paintwork on the car, and this gives you a clear depiction of what faded paint looks like look at the difference.

There that's huge now it is better to have touch-up paint on the car than a big black gash or a white gash or whatever color is underneath here. I'm just letting you guys know if you have faded paint, you're gon na see more of a color difference between your touch-up paint and your original paint. So just keep that in mind now, in this case our car is less than five years old. So we really don't have to worry about faded paint, so we could begin our repair of our deep scratch now.

I think it's very important to understand the different layers of paint that way. You know exactly what we're doing to repair this. So let me show you: first, you have the actual panel, usually it's sheet metal or plastic. Then the first coat is a primer coat.

Usually this is a gray primer and it ranges anywhere between 10 and 40 microns thick, then on top of that primer is a base coat. This is what gives your car a color. This color coat is usually within 10 to 40 microns thick as well, and then, finally, on top of that is the thickest layer, the clear coat layer and that protects the base coat and gives it a nice glossy shine. This could be anywhere from 40 microns to 100 microns, so in total the paint could be anywhere from 60 to 180 microns, and that varies a lot, because different manufacturers spray on different thicknesses of paint and just to put that into perspective a plain sheet of printer Paper like this is about 100 microns thick, so this is about how thick your paintwork is on top of your panel.
So this right here is definitely a deep scratch. It goes through the base coat into the primer. It's not a clear coat scratch now, if you do have a clear coat scratch like this one right here on my truck. Don't worry! This is super easy to repair and i have a full, in-depth video that shows you how to remove a clear coat scratch and i'll be sure to link that video in the description, so you can easily find it, but to verify this is actually a scratch.

That's in the clear coat only it's not a deep scratch or a paint transfer. All you need to do is get some alcohol on a rag and then wipe it down, and it should disappear like that, and this is only temporary, but you can see how it disappears and after a couple seconds the alcohol starts to evaporate and the scratch will Start to be visible again, but that's a good way to tell if you have a clear coat scratch alright. So now you know the different layers of paint, the different types of scratches. Let me show you how to repair a deep scratch like this and remember the larger, the deep scratch the harder the repair.

If you have a smaller one, it's going to be super easy. So after you see how we get this done, you'll be able to do. Yours no problem at all, so the first step is to clean our entire panel, we'll start off using soapy water. All this is, is a squirt of dish, soap and fill the rest up with warm water and just spray this down, and what this is going to do is this is going to remove oils, waxes, dirt and debris stuff like that, that we don't want to get Into our scratch all right, so step number one is done.

Our panel is clean, so now we can move on to step number two and that is to prep our scratch. Now it's very very important. We cannot have any rust at all in our scratch. If there's any rust and you paint over that rust, the paint will bubble.

So you have to remove all the rust. Luckily, we don't have any rust in this scratch. But let's just say you did have some rust just get some 400 grit sandpaper fold it over and get that rust out of the scratch. You could also use that abrasive tip on the paint pen.

This is really good at removing rust as well. You just want to get in that scratch and again remove all the rust if there is any so once all the rust is removed from the scratch. The next thing in this step to prep the scratch is to remove the sharp edges. So, whenever there's a deep scratch, the edge of the scratch is steep and jagged, so we want to sand that edge of the scratch to round it out and make it less of a steep, cliff and more of a smooth round hill.

This will make the touch-up paint blend in much better to the surrounding paintwork and make it a lot harder to see the repair. And if you take a look at our scratch, you could clearly see those sharp jagged edges that we need to smooth out to make our touch-up blend better so start by using the abrasive tip on the touch-up pen and focus your sanding on the jagged edges. Don't worry if you send a little bit onto the clear coat because we're going to be adding more later, just focus on getting those sharp jagged, edges, nice and smooth then wipe down the scratch with some alcohol to remove all the dust you just created. So we could get an accurate look at the progress we've made so now that the edges are sanded, we want to feather out our sanding onto the base coat and onto the clear coat right next to the scratch.
This is going to give us a nice smooth transition and to do that, you could either use 800 grit or 1000 grit sandpaper and have a little trick. I want to show you with the sandpaper. If we just fold the sandpaper over once that's going to give us a sharp edge like that, and that's not going to help us smooth this out. This is just going to dig into the paint and not give us that smooth hill that we need.

So what we're going to do is fold it over one more time but don't crease it just lightly fold it over. So it has like a semi-circle there and you can see how we don't have a sharp edge. That's a nice rounded edge and we're going to use that to sand our scratch and just look at how nicely that rounded sandpaper fits in that scratch now to round it out. That is beautiful! That's exactly what you want now, you're, probably wondering: how do you know when you're done sanding, you don't want to remove too much well.

All you need to do is feel with your fingernail. If you could grab the edge of the scratch with your fingernail, you should sand a little bit more to make it more rounded. In this case, this feels nice and smooth again it's like a hill rather than a cliff. I cannot grab this with my fingernail, so we are done so here's what the scratch looked like before with sharp jagged edges and here's what it looks like after nice and smooth.

So that's all. There is to our second step, remove any rust from the scratch and then smooth it out to remove all the sharp jagged edges now remember the smaller the scratch, the quicker and easier. This is, i just did that one section right there. I still need to do the rest of the scratch, which is pretty big.

It goes all the way around, so i'm gon na go knock this out real quick and then we can move on to the next step, which is our painting step. Now, although i said i'm going to knock this out real quick, you want to take your time here. This is very important to do properly, sand that scratch down, remove any of those sharp jagged edges and that's going to give you the best results. Once we add our paint with a touch-up pen now you can see right here.

This scratch is a lot more narrow. It's still a deep scratch. It still goes all the way through the base coat into the primer, but they use the sharp end of the key. Instead of the wide end, so they created a narrow, deep scratch, since your scratch might look like this, rather than a wide scratch that i just showed you here's how to prep this one.
The process is basically the same you're going to start out with your abrasive tip on the paint pen just like before, but now the scratch is so narrow, we're actually setting down both edges at the same time and for a tight scratch like this. We don't want to make it too much wider if we could help it so keep that sanding right on top of the scratch same with the sandpaper, keep the sandpaper rolled nice and tight that way, we're focusing just on the scratch and don't sand too far off The sides of the scratch now here's a really good angle, to show you how tight we're keeping this for sanding the narrow scratch. And if you take a look even on this narrow scratch, we made sure we have a nice smooth transition and it's not a sharp cliff. So the same process applies.

We didn't have to make it extra wide, but we did want to make sure you could see. There is the primer. You can see the base coat right there and then the clear coat right there. So we have multiple layers that way when we fill this in.

We could fill it in and hide the scratch now after you're done sanding down your entire scratch and smoothing it out, make sure you go back one more time and check for any sharp edges, and i keep bringing this up because it's probably the most important part Of this entire touch-up job to get the best results, you should not be able to feel a difference between the clear coat and the base coat down into the primer. This should feel nice and smooth, and it does if there is a lip right here. I promise you, you will see it once you add your touch-up paint, so with our entire scratch, nice and smooth, you can't grab it with your fingernail. We are done with the prep step and we are ready for step number three, the painting step, so we smoothed out the deep scratch and now we need to add our touch-up paint.

When we add the touch-up paint, don't worry about adding too much. We actually want to overflow out of the scratch and be higher than the surrounding factory paint. So let's go do that before you paint make sure you get some isopropyl alcohol and a towel and wipe down the entire scratch. Make sure you get in the scratch on the edge of the scratch and the surrounding area of the scratch? This is going to remove all of those oils, waxes grease any dirt any dust.

We want this surface to be perfectly clean so that our paint could adhere to it now with that completely clean. The next step is to grab some tape and we need to tape off our scratch. Let's start on the bottom of the scratch and place the tape about one to two millimeters from the edge of the scratch. It doesn't have to be perfect.

Just make sure it's not touching the scratch and the reason i suggest taping it it's easier for cleanup. So, with the scratch surrounded by tape, we don't have to worry about touch-up paint getting on the surrounding paintwork, which adds more work for us later on. So when we're done clean up is easy, just remove the tape and that's all there is to it make sure you add tape to your scratch, like that and you'll see how helpful this is going to be after we finish painting. So hopefully your scratch is tiny and you just need to tape up a little area like that.
But in this case we have a giant scratch so beautiful. So now the entire scratch is taped off top and bottom, and this is what it should look like and if you're wondering don't worry about the tape lines we'll have after the paint dries we'll be sanding down the touch-up paint. So it's level with the surrounding paint. So paint lines don't even matter it's just a lot less work.

If we keep the paint contained to one small area, so now we are ready to go. It is time to add our paint to our scratch. You want to make sure you shake it up. Real good, this paint has primer and paint built in so we don't need to prime it so, let's unscrew our brush and make sure you remove all the excess paint by wiping the brush on the edge of the container.

So we don't have a big blob on the end of the brush. Now, when applying the paint, it's important, we start with very thin layers and apply to the top of the scratch, because gravity is going to pull some of that paint down and, as you can see, we have a paint drip coming down the edge of our brush. So let's wipe that off so it doesn't add too much paint to the scratch good, and now we want to continue to work our way from one end of the scratch to the other, making sure the paint is being applied as thin as possible, while still getting Coverage like so now, you might be tempted to go back and try to touch something up, but don't do it don't go over here and try to mess around with it, because this dries pretty quickly might dry in like 10-15 seconds. And if you go back and try to mess around with it that surface skin, that forms is gon na get messed up and it's not gon na look good.

So just wait, don't worry, we're gon na add some more layers and it's gon na look way better. Another thing is, this: paint is relatively self-leveling, so if you start to go in there again, you're gon na make it look really rough, but as it dries on its own it'll self-level and be a lot smoother than the texture that the brush creates. Okay, so five minutes later, our paint is ready for the next coat just like before apply a thin coat on top of the scratch and work your way across the scratch and don't backtrack at all. Five.

More minutes later, we are ready for our third coat and i think you get the idea the whole goal is. We want to build up thin coats higher than the surrounding paint. That way, when the paint dries, we could sand it down even with the factory paint and also i'm sure, you've noticed you don't have to be good at using a paint brush. You just need to make sure the layers are thin and even - and even if it doesn't look great, it will sand nice and smooth once we're done.
Another five minutes later and we're on coat. Four and this coat is gon na, be a little bit thicker and we don't want it to be a giant blob, so you could drag that paint across the rest of the scratch to even it out. Just like that, and this scratch looks like it's completely filled in so this is gon na, be our last layer. So in this case it took four layers for our paint to build up thick enough, so it's above the surrounding paintwork.

We want it to be above because now we're gon na sand it down we're gon na sand it down, so that it's level with the rest of the paint. So don't worry, if you add too many layers in this case it took four. It might take you five, it might take you six, it could take you three. You just wan na make sure you have more layers than you need.

You wan na make sure it's thicker than the surrounding paint. That way. When you sand it down, you could sand it even with the rest of the body work. So four layers later and this paintwork is looking absolutely incredible.

Our touch-up paint came out awesome. It matches really well, you can see how well it matches, and i cannot wait to take this tape off and finish up this job and see how awesome it came out now, after letting the paint dry for about 10 minutes, we could carefully remove the tape and Don't just rip it off do this slowly, the trick is to pull the tape back on itself as you're, removing it also pull the edge at a 45 degree angle, away from the touch-up paint that way, it's going to give it a nice sharp line without damaging The paint so take your time and carefully remove all the tape and any tape you can't peel off use a straight edge to lift the corner up. So you don't damage your touch-up paint with your finger and once you get the corner up, then it should peel off nice and easy like that all right, and would you look at this? This is looking so much better already now. I know there are paint lines you can clearly see it.

It's not blended in yet, but next step is to remove the paint lines it's to sand this down, so it blends in with the rest of the paintwork and it's gon na look incredible. This paint is matching super nice and you're. Barely gon na be able to see this. This is gon na, come out so good, i'm so pumped okay.

So, let's get on to the next step, which is to sand down the touch-up paint. Okay, now for the sanding step, we're gon na be using 800 grit sandpaper. So what i like to do with the sandpaper is i like to cut it into a small square like that and with our sandpaper we don't want to go and try to sand this by hand. That's gon na damage the clear coat we're gon na get uneven.

Marks what we need is a small sanding block. A typical size, sanding block is going to be way too big for this little piece, so find something like a domino in this case. The domino works perfect. It is a small flat surface and what we're going to do is wrap our sandpaper around the domino.
Now we have a flat small thin surface that we could use to sand away the paint lines without damaging the surrounding clear coat. Now our touch-up paint is completely dry. It's been sitting here for over an hour. You don't want to sand, wet touch-up paint, so let it dry and hours plenty of time, and now we just need to sand these paint lines away, and you can see how the domino is just the right width for sanding, the touch-up paint and the technique here Is to sand back and forth along the scratch until it levels off with the surrounding paintwork.

You want to do your best and keep that sandpaper on the touch-up paint and try not to sand the surrounding factory paint too much, and once the scratch is level. Stop. Sanding, so you don't remove too much paint and then run your finger across the scratch and you shouldn't feel anything. It should feel nice and smooth like that beautiful now, so you could appreciate what we just did and the whole point of sanding it down.

You can see our strong paint line goes all the way across now right here, where we sanded it that section right there. This is completely gone, it looks perfect, i mean it's not done yet we didn't polish it. Yet we didn't add clear coat and that scratch disappeared. You can't feel it at all and it looks absolutely perfect.

That's exactly what you want to do for the rest of your scratch. Now, since i'm working on a large scratch to prevent the sandpaper from gumming up with paint spray, the area down with soapy water and then you could start sanding away and there really isn't anything special to this all you're doing is sanding the touch-up paint so that It's level with the surrounding paint, so i'm going to work my way around the entire scratch leveling it out and just make sure you keep that sandpaper localized onto the touch of paint and then once the paint is level with the surrounding area. You are done and when you think you're done wipe your hand across the panel and see if you can feel any bumps from the touch of paint. If you do feel bumps, you didn't sand enough, keep going in this case.

This feels nice and smooth. Now, although this looks great make sure you take your time and visually inspect your entire scratch, if you see any spots where the paint doesn't look great, it's not up to your standards, you want to make it look better, now's, the time to do it, because once You put that clear coat on it's a lot more difficult to sand the clear coat completely away and then retouch up that area. For example. Right here you can see our scratch is pretty well blended here.

You can't really see it, but then, once you get right there there's an indentation. We either didn't put enough paint in there or when we sanded it it chipped away. Whatever the case is that we will definitely see after we add our clear coat. So, let's fix it and to fix it, all you need to do is fill it back in.
If you want, you could add tape, i'm not going to i'm going to just be extra careful here and i just need to fill it just a little bit. So one coat should do the trick and 10 minutes later. Let's get some soapy water on there and wet sand the touch of paint until it's nice and level with the surrounding paintwork good, let's wipe it down and that looks way better. Alright.

So once you're happy with how your touch-up paint came out, the last thing we need to do is apply our clear coat to all the parts that we touched up but before we add clear coat, let's get some isopropyl alcohol on a towel and wipe down the Panel to remove any dust, that's still on there from sanding. Now we can add our clear coat and just like the color coat, we want to add thin layers, start from one end of the scratch and work your way down to the other end, and it's really difficult to get clear coat to go on smooth, especially with A brush like this, so don't really worry about how it looks. We just want to have a complete layer covering our touch-up paint and also a little bit of overlap on the surrounding factory paint and then, after letting this dry for 10 minutes apply. One final coat for a total of two coats again just make sure the entire scratch is covered in clear coat.

That way we could sand it smooth with the surrounding clear coat so with two thin layers of clear coat coating. Our entire scratch sealing in our touch-up paint. Now i'm going to let this dry for about an hour and an hour later, you can see the clear coat here is dry and has a nice gloss to it, but it's uneven and there's ridges and stuff well to remove the ridges spray it down with soapy Water and grab your 800 grit sandpaper and start sanding it down. So it's level with the surrounding clear coat.

Then we can move up to 1 500 grit, so spray down the paint and wet sand. The clear coat we applied and start feathering out your sanding into the surrounding clear coat as well. Then we can move up the 2000 grit so spray down the paint and wet sand. Our touch-up clear coat as well as a little bit of the surrounding clear coat and then let's wipe this down and let's see how it came out, and if you run your finger across, you can't feel the clear coat.

It is nice and level with the factory clear coat and that's exactly what we want. So at this point where you added your clear coat, should feel nice and smooth. We sanded it down so that it's level with the factory paint work and one way to make sure is close your eyes and just run your fingers across the panel. You shouldn't be able to feel any divots any valleys, any hills, any bumps.
Anything like that. It should just feel like one smooth panel, and that does that feels absolutely perfect. So now you can probably see there is a little bit of a haze here and some of the panel's glossy some of it's not glossy. We need to fix that and that's the fourth step, the final step, that's where we do a wet sand and then we polish it and we make this look like one perfect panel.

So, let's get to it and to wet sand we're going to start out with 3000 grit sandpaper, then we'll move our way up to 5000 grit, sandpaper and finally, to get the gloss back, we'll finish up with a nice coat of polish. Now, before you start sanding a helpful trick, i want to show you: don't use your bare hands to wet sand. What happens? Is your fingers create pressure points on the sandpaper and you won't get an even sand? It'll create hot spots and it won't look good. So a trick is to grab a sponge, lay it over the sandpaper wrap your sandpaper around it, and now the sponge will absorb any pressure points.

So you have a nice even sand. Now real quick. I want to show you up close what this is going to look like, so you can see where we've been working right there. It's all scratched up! Well we're going to wet sand with the 3000 grit.

Then we're going to wet sand with the 5000 grit. Then we're gon na buff in some polish, which is a light abrasive and then we'll buff that off and then that will blend in that scratch. You can't even see it anymore. It literally disappears, so we want to apply the same process to the entire panel and make it blend in and look uniform, so spray it down with soapy water and get some on the sandpaper too, and sand the entire panel down with 3000 grit sandpaper and while Wet sanding make sure you move in a back and forth motion.

Don't do any circles because circles form circular, scratches and circular scratches are more difficult to remove than straight scratches. Then you can wipe down the panel to remove any small particles we created with the 3000 grit sandpaper, and now we can spray the panel down with soapy water and move on to our 5000 grit. Sandpaper again make sure you sand down the entire panel. Don't miss any spots or you're gon na see it when we're done.

Finally do one more wipe down and we are on the last step, which is the polishing step, so get some polish on the buffing pad and then spread it out over the entire panel. And finally, with heavy pressure buff, the polish into the panel in a circular motion since polish is a very fine abrasive. The circular motion attacks the scratches in all different directions to make the clear coat nice and glossy. So now, with the whole panel polished grab a fresh microfiber towel and buff off the polish to reveal a nice and shiny panel.

Look at that and beautiful. We brought back all that gloss to our panel and this is a real high gloss shine right now and we blend it in the scratch. So you can't even see it and with that we are done and holy smokes. You can't even see the scratch anymore.
It is gone. Look at that and just as a reminder, this is what the scratch looked like before we started. It's clearly visible, doesn't look good at all and here's what it looks like after you can't even see it. You would never know there was a giant deep scratch on here now, although these results are absolutely amazing, it's not perfect.

You can still see the scratch. If you get to the right angle - and you could kind of kind of see it right there, it's a little tough to see, but you get the idea. If you get to the right angle, if you get up close you're able to see it once you step back just a little bit, it disappears it's gone and then, if you're looking at the car from 5-10 feet away, you'll never see it so for 15, a Paint pen works so well and now you know how to get these kind of results. So, with your panel all touched up, it's looking beautiful.

You might be tempted to try to add a wax or ceramic coating to protect it, but don't do that just yet. Touch-Up paint can take up to 30 days to fully cure and harden so you don't want to seal it off and prevent that from happening. In the meantime, you could still drive the car. You could still get it wet, go in the rain, wash the car, whatever.

Just don't seal it with a ceramic coating or a wax, so there you go now. You know how to properly repair deep, scratches using a simple touch-up pen, and this came out absolutely amazing. It looks incredible and you guys could get those same results. Also.

Another thing i want to mention is: if you get little rock chips on your front, bumper from rocks kicking up, you can follow the same exact steps and get the same amazing results. So hopefully the video was helpful if it was remember to give it a thumbs up if you're not a subscriber, consider hitting that subscribe button for more automotive how-to videos just like this, and as always all the tools and products i used in this video are linked In the description.

15 thoughts on “How to repair a deep scratch in car paint (diy)”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars jb123564 says:

    Just ordered in all the stuff to do this on my car, bought a pre owned car and over the space of a year a scratch has become more visible that I've just realised was clearly a keying on the bonnet, its a lot thinner this one so should be easier to mask, hopefully:)

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Seweryn Durak says:

    I gotta say that was an amazing job. I've always tired to use the touch up paint myself but i never built it up or sanded it down. Those were the steps I never took. Thank you for the video, I will definately try these steps.

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Rotor Blade says:

    my neighbors have hit the front bumper of my car several times lately and cracked the front grille every time . They never leave any note btw. I had to reconstruct the cracked polypropylene using PP bars and a soldering station (with a tip made from a pressed copper pipe) and steel stitches then plastic filler, after that I used primer and a can spray and the result was pretty good but quite a lot of work although not that complicated job.
    Anyway replacing the bumper would’ve cost me $100 in Romania from salvage parts and $120 to respray it, not that much but still not worth it with the car being hit so often.

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Benjamin Woodman says:

    Love how all the touch-up paint videos really emphasize rust removal, good thing is my body is fiberglass, bad thing is my body is fiberglass… a body that should NEVER, have a scratch on it 😭

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Joel Vazquez says:

    wow 👏 Chris I feel like is to much but it did the Job… I'm going to try it on my Car this weekend some Jackass pulled out the parking and Scratch the side of my front bumper

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Henry . . says:

    What do you do in the instance of a raised scratch? Aka the scratch isnt just a gouge in the paint, but the paint around the scratch is raised from the force of the scratch.

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars tigress63 says:

    I found with the Toyota touch up paint even with a 3000 and higher grit and waiting a day for it to dry, it would remove parts of the paint. I also found that the speckled parts were drawn closest to the car so when sanding it was like glitter and the colour which is more transparent faded off. I don't know how they mix their paint but it has some really odd characteristics.

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Steven Cramsie says:

    It’s very convenient that the example in this video is on a white car, where you don’t see any of the frosting that occurs on the car’s clearcoat finish as you’re going through the process. Therefore you’re not sure how you’re supposed to fix that and just “covering a little bit past the scratch with the clearcoat” is not enough to do it. My car is silver metallic, and I’ve made the tiny deep scratch I had even more noticeable because of the big cloud that’s around it. And no, the polish in the final step doesn’t fix that

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Angel Li says:

    Chris, thank you for sharing this. it's easy and simple informative video. I am completely outsider of auto repair. In your description box, could you also share where you got clear coat please? 😉

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars chuckciao1 says:

    Chris, you are the man! Fabulous video! Clear, concise and with your excellent explanation, fairly easily for the novice to do, with incredible results to boot! I would nominate you for the YouTube Best Video Ever (if there was one).

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Marlo Concordance says:

    Clicked the link for the pens and they don't have any that match my 2017 car. Thank goodness for being old and having good insurance – they will pick up the tab for that scratch!~

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Troy Erbe says:

    Hey Chris, love your videos and I appreciate how well you teach as you go. Question though: You said when you started painting that the paint had primer already in it but the tape looks like you either sprayed primer or used a spray touch-up paint. Did I miss something in the video or did you just not cover that step?

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Mohammed Melegy says:

    Thank you very much for your great valuable video !
    May I ask a question? I have multiple deep scratches does it work with them or I need a filler and a compound to do them ?
    Thank you

  14. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars JustTechIt says:

    All the time I am watching ChrisFix's videos pumped up that I will do it my self.. I end up paying a professional but I really enjoy watching him doing it perfectly and being so excited about it 😀

  15. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars MrWolfSnack says:

    Just FYI everything he shows aside from the wax, paint pen, and the sandpaper can be found at the dollar store so don't pay full price for that crap. The sandpaper and wax varies in price by brand so just get the cheapest sandpaper and splurge on the wax.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.