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Someone Bumped or Scraped Your Car or Truck How to Remove or Repair Paint Transfer

Created on: 2021-08-25

Len explains the layers of paint on a car or truck, and how that relates to repairing that damage, and what you can do to buff out light scratches and scuffs!

Come on. Oh, God. Oh, they won't mind. I'm gonna pick a different parking spot. What is going on right here? Sorry about the scratch. Oh, no.

Hey, friends, it's Len here from 1A Auto. So in today's video, I wanna talk to you about paint transfer. If you were to look at this bumper right here and maybe you saw the cold intro, you saw exactly what happened. Somebody drove by, they incidentally scraped up against this with their white paint and it transferred to this red bumper. I wanna see how much of this I can get off of here, so let's talk about it. Now, before we get too deep into this, let's go ahead and talk about paint and how it works. Essentially, you're gonna have the metal aspect of the vehicle or essentially the base layer. After that, you should have a primer. That's essentially gonna go ahead and soak up that paint and make sure that it wants to stick. Of course, we're gonna have the base coat of the pain itself, whatever color you pick, maybe you like red, maybe like a nice, black truck, or whatever the case may be, but you don't wanna just stop there. You have to make sure that you coat it with something, otherwise, the paint's very fragile and could potentially easily get damaged.

So right up along the top here, you're gonna notice that we have a nice, thick coat of clear coat right across there. So we know how paint's layered on there, but what about if you get a little bit of damage on the paint? Maybe somebody came up and they gave it a big old bonk or they just went ahead and chiseled it with something, maybe something metal, carved right into it, it went through that clear coat. As you can see right here, went in through the paint layer there, and even went all the way down to the primer area. At this point, you're not necessarily gonna be able to try to buff this out. It's gonna be a little bit more difficult because the paint actually got damaged and it doesn't really matter if you try to buff it out or even put any clear coat over that. It's still gonna have an area where you can't see any paint and it's gonna look like a scratch no matter what you do.

So the way that you'd have to fix that is to add another coat of paint in that area that you're gonna be fixing and then, of course, layer it with some clear coat. But if you're lucky enough and you just had a light scuff, it's really just a small scratch and it didn't even penetrate the clear coat layer right here, it definitely didn't get into that paint. Typically, all you really have to do is just wash the area down completely and then give it a nice, light buff.

So now, at this point, you can carefully take your buffer and you can make something that looks just like this that you're gonna be able to see from a distance to look a little bit more like this. The reason why this is gonna be better overall is because light deflection. Essentially, light's shining down on the vehicle's paint itself and if you have a little discrepancy like this right here, the sun's gonna kind of channel into that and go [Vocalization]. If you have a nice little layer like this right here, where it just kind of swoops, you're not even gonna be able to see the light reflecting off of there in strange directions. Now, the first step to determining whether or not we're just gonna be able to buff out this little transfer right here or if it's something that's actually damaged to the vehicle itself is to just take a little bit of water and you can get this pretty much anywhere, right?

We're just gonna go ahead and spray it on here and what we wanna pay attention to is the areas that stay different color and areas that look like they kind of disappear. The areas that disappear generally are pretty much just an issue with the clear coat and I feel as though we'll be able to buff that out. But the areas that you can still see the scratch, when this is wet, well, that's telling you that pretty much these areas aren't necessarily gonna come out very easy. Now, no matter what you're gonna wanna do, you're gonna have to work with a clean surface because, of course, I don't wanna start grinding in anything that might be sitting on this, such as dirt or any other type of debris. As you can tell on this particular car, it's in horrible condition. Somebody parked it underneath some sappy trees and I might've even done a video on it already. Anyways. So we're just gonna go ahead and clean this down with some soapy water and a nice microfiber cloth.

Okay. Now, obviously, it would probably be better to just go ahead and clean down this whole car, but for this particular video, we're just gonna concentrate on this one area. Make sure we get off any of that soap that might be hanging out in the area here. Let's go ahead and rinse this right down. And then we'll let it air dry. After this is nice and dry, the next thing we wanna think about is the temperature of the area we're gonna be working with. Go ahead and take a quick measurement. If you've got one of these tools, take a measurement to see approximately where it's at. Other than that, you can just go ahead and carefully touch on it and just essentially make sure it's not super hot. Why does it even matter what the temperature of this is? Well, because we're gonna be using some compounds and once it dries out, it's not gonna do the buffing process properly. You're gonna have issues that way. So if it's nice and cool, like this one is here, approximately low 70s, that's gonna be perfect because the compound will stay nice and liquidy and soft.

It's time to start talking about how to buff out this little scuff right here. There's gonna be several ways you can do it. You can get yourself one of these little hand pads right here. It's nice and soft. Make sure it doesn't have any dirt or debris on it. And then, of course, you'd just take a little bit of that rubbing compound, go ahead and dab it on there, then we're gonna gently try to work that paint transfer away. Now, that might take a little while. If you want it to be a little bit more efficient, you can go ahead and take one of your little drills that I'm sure you've probably got into your shed, or your garage, or even in your basement, and just get one of these little pads. You can get them pretty much anywhere. Once again, take that compound on there and then a light buff. Hopefully, we can get this off. Something like this is a little bit more what people might be trying to use. The only thing about this though is it has a little bit of weight to it, a little bit of girth. It might weigh a lot if you're trying to repair a scratch or a scuff that's up along the hood because you're gonna have the entire weight pressing down. I think it's smoking.

Oops. When we're doing something like this, we wanna try to be as gentle as possible so we don't necessarily damage the clear coat. We just kind of wanna smoothing it out a little bit. The reason why I'm gonna go with this, overdoing something like this is essentially because you don't have all day to sit here and watch me go ahead and do this. This is gonna be a little bit faster, but speaking of speed, you wanna make sure that you're not necessarily going super fast. If I go ahead and crank this thing all the way up to let's say 11, turn it on, holy moly. Hey, turn it off. So we're gonna have to turn this down a little bit before we can start working with it. Like I said, using this pad, there's no way I can make this thing go just as fast as that. Before I go ahead and turn this on, I'm just gonna turn down the settings to as slow as possible. That way there, once I put my compound on here and I go ahead and turn it on while it's up against the body here, it's not necessarily gonna go shooting out all over the place.

Great. So I put a little bit of my compound on here. Now I'm gonna go ahead and carefully press it straight up against the paint, putting minimal pressure, and then we'll go ahead and turn this on. The reason why we're putting it up against there first is because if I switch this on like I said before, it's pretty much just gonna shoot out all over the place. I got it on there. I'm just gonna go ahead and dab this all over the place a little bit. Just try to work it in.

You know, that doesn't look too bad in the areas that I could actually take off where it was only a clear coat issue. It looks kind of amazing. There were some areas that obviously the buffer is not gonna be able to remove. Those areas are a little bit deeper and this is gonna require some different types of bodywork. Now, something that I wanna talk about while we're still working on this boat anchor car. When I was buffing this, of course, I was trying to go as light as possible and I got off the areas that it was just an issue with the clear coat. Let's say that you went ahead and you were looking at it and you can tell that the scuff that was on it wasn't issue with the clear coat. You went ahead and you gave it a nice, light buff, it seemed like it disappeared, but you were looking along and you're like, "Oh. There's a couple of light scratches. I think I'm gonna try to buff this up a little bit more." You threw on a little bit more of that compound and what happened when you were going? You started going a little bit harder and harder over time as you started to get fatigued.

Now, at that point, you might've potentially went through the clear coat. I have a little chip of clear coat right here. And as you can tell, this is pretty thin. It's super thin, actually. And this is actually the thickest coat of your car's paint job. So let's say that you did your first pass and then after you were done you went ahead and you looked at your pad and it still looked like it was nice and clean, it just had a little bit of that rubbing compound on there. You went ahead and you squeezed on a little bit more, you did your last buff like what I was saying before, and you turned it over, and now you can see a little bit of that red.

Now, in our case, you could tell that our paint was actually damaged. It went right through the clear coat into where the pain is and that's why our buffing pad has a little bit of that red on it. But let's say in a different scenario where you only had a couple of light scratches that you were trying to buff out of there, and those light scratches were only into the clear coat. You go ahead and you do a little extra buffing, you're getting a little bit tired, and then, overall, you're pressing a little bit too hard. In that case, you might've potentially went through that super-thin clear coat that's supposed to be protecting the paint. You started getting into the paint a little bit with the buffing pad and now you've got pay transfer to the buffing pad itself. At that point, you know you've completely damaged the clear coat in this area and you're gonna need to reapply.

Now, once I finished buffing that up, I'm just gonna continue on with a little bit of this wax and I wanna just make sure I completely seal up this area that I just finished working on. Okay. At this point, this one's about as good as it's gonna get, but I've got another vehicle that I happened to notice there was a little bit more paint to transfer on, so I wanna go ahead and try that one as well.

So now this is my truck and I love my truck, but one thing that I don't love about my truck is when I went ahead and bought it, it did have a minor defect right down along this area right here, which is probably why I worked myself a great deal. Obviously, taking this thing through the car wash probably would have been a great idea, but I don't have that kind of money or that kind of time. I'm in the middle of a video. So I'm just gonna go ahead and clean this down, like we did on the other car, a little bit of soapy water. We'll get it nice and soaking wet, get off any of this dirt or debris that we can see in the area so we can get started. Okay. So I've got this washed down, dried down, and I'm looking at it and I think it looks horrible, but let's give it the water test and just see what might happen. Looking at this, you can tell that the majority of this is more than likely gonna come out as we start our buffing. I'm pretty excited about that. Something that I absolutely need to mention to you, if you're gonna be waxing or even using some kind of compounds to be able to buff out any of the paint on your vehicle, you wanna make sure that you go ahead and you tape off any of the plastic trim that you have on here because the compound or wax is gonna discolor it.

[00:11:00]
[Music]
[00:12:12]

All right. So, at this point, if you're looking at it close enough, you can still tell that there are some scratches on this paint. Is that a boo? Maybe a little boo. But overall, if somebody is looking at this from a distance, are they gonna see a big, old, white transfer of paint on the backside of my truck right here? Probably not unless they're looking that close. Who's looking that close, maybe wifey poo, maybe she's gonna tell me she loves it. Woo. Now it might do me well to go ahead and do the rest of the truck just like this, but this looks good enough for now.

All right. So let's wrap this up real quick. If you have a light amount of paint transfer that went ahead and got onto your paint like this one right here, you could just carefully try to wash down the infected area, you're gonna give it a light buff with some buffing compounds, and then, of course, you wanna make sure that you coat it with some sort of wax that's gonna help protect the area. But if you had an area that looked like this where it went through the clear coat, through the paint, and even into the panel in some areas, that's definitely not something that you're gonna typically be able to buff out of there or even add a little bit of wax. Something like that, you're gonna need a little bit more bodywork.

Oh, hey, Len. You think you can buff this off for me? I got in a little bit of an accident here.

I don't think any amount of buffing is gonna get this off.

Oh. Well, that's too bad.

Sorry, dude. Just as a side note, when you're buying compounds or even the buffing pads, there's gonna be different options for you. So you're gonna wanna make sure that you judge it by the particular application that you need. Some types of bodywork, you're gonna have to have something a little bit more abrasive to get started, and then you're gonna work your way into something a little bit more fine. Other times, it's just a mild scuff on the bumper there or someplace on your body. You can go with something very fine for that. You're probably gonna find some compounds that are gonna cut a little bit more than others. You're also gonna have different types of pads. Some of them are gonna be more abrasive than others and then, of course, they have different cooling effects. These ones right here are gonna keep cooler a little longer. This one right here, it's nice and soft. You're not even gonna use this for buffing. This is kind of for more at the end when you're just adding a little bit of wax.

Okay, friends, so I hope this video helped you out a little bit. Maybe you've had a situation like this before where maybe somebody gave you a light scuff and they left you a little love note and maybe a couple of dollars aside so you can go ahead and get yourself a nice copy if you're lucky. Either way, I hope you liked the video, I hope it helps you out. If you did and you wanna share it, go ahead and share it. If you liked the video, smash on the like button for me. It would mean the world. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe, ring the bell that way there you and all of your friends can be kept up with all of our content. Thanks.


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