I went to the track for the first time a few weeks ago. Lots of fun, but in my newbie-ness I pinched a turn and ended up in the dirt, going sideways at a pretty good speed. In addition to filling my car with dirt, which I'm still finding even after a fairly thorough vacuuming, I got several good scratches on my passenger side. Do you think there is any chance I could work these out? Would I need to do some serious polishing, perhaps wet sanding? Or am I pretty much screwed. Any advice is appreciated.

Not the best pics, but maybe you get the idea? These were taken a day after washing the car.

 

Can try meguair's scratch X...

 

I have some I'm selling at the moment if you're interested.

 

Carefully run your nail against the scratches. If you can feel that the scracth is "guiding" your nail then no, they are not going to come off. If you can glide your nail along the scratch without your nail catching the groove, then yes, some polish, possibly even some wetsanding are required.

 

Thanks. I sifted through more of the info in the forum... lots of good info. I can feel the scratches when I run my finger nail over them. My Sat. is looking pretty free so I'll try to do a wash/clay/polish/wax and see where that leaves me. I picked up some Meguire's scratch remover. I have a feeling that I'll still have at least some of the scratches, but we'll see. This is my DD and there are several other visual imperfections on the car so I'm not gonna flip out over it, but I'll see how good I can make it look.

 

^ good stuff. looks like it'd buff out though. depending on where you are, there might be a wacko / good detailer in your area. they're probably help you spot treat those imperfections

 

Right, there are def. some good detailers in the area on s2ki. I took it to Jake (ushjt) a couple months after I bought the car and was very happy with the result. But now I have a little extra time on my hands so I will try the safe stuff myself, and if that fails, I'll take it to those who know what they're doing. I'll try to remember to take some pics along the way.

 

Doing those marks by hand will be a waste of time and extreme effort. A pc occilates in the thousands per minute compared to the hundred you would do by hand.

Bottom line, you will see no benefit by doing this by hand, the marks will still be visible and your arm/hand will need chiropractic work

 

good stuff- see about maybe getting some equipment, or even learning how to use some of his
a post in your regional forum might yeild a nice "detail day" come spring in which a few different members could get together for a wash-n-wax with spot correcting even

 

So, I had a go of it on Sat. and I'm pretty happy with the results. I washed the car with Dawn, and then used 3M Scratch Remover on the scratches with a terry cloth. I then clayed and waxed the car. In total I spent nearly 5 hours (time flew by!) and I could have easily spent another couple, but I had other stuff to do. Because I was trying to move things along somewhat quickly, I didn't take much care with the photos, but hopefully they get the point across.

Scratches after the wash (click twice for the up close and personal view):



Here is an example of a before and after with the 3M Scratch Remover:


In real life, it wasnt' perfect, but it was much improved. It didn't take everything out immediately, but after I clayed and waxed, I was very happy with the results. I don't know if you wackos would be satisfied, but I thought it was a pretty good improvement.

Here is after the wax:



And the finished product:


Actually, after the wax, I didn't take a real hard look to see if I could find the scratches. But if you don't know what you're looking for, you won't see anything.

One question I had: when claying the car, I used at least half the bottle of detailers spray that came with the clay. Did I use way too much? Can you just use water? Or perhaps after washing the car, don't dry it and then start claying immediately?