How to Repair a DEEP SCRATCH in Car Paint (DIY)

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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna stand from right about here two three feet away and

you're not gonna 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 gonna go above and beyond everything you've seen i'm gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna need again trying to keep it simple and inexpensive you're gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna get messed up and it's not gonna look good so

just wait don't worry we're gonna add some more layers and it's gonna look way better another thing is this paint is relatively self-leveling so if you start to go in there again you're gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna sand it down we're gonna 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 wanna make sure you have more layers than you need you wanna 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 gonna look incredible this paint is matching super nice and you're barely gonna be able to see this this is gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna damage the clear coat we're gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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