DIY Cosmetic Body Repair: Fixing Minor Scratches at Home

Many of us know the sinking feeling of finding a scratch on the body of a brand-new car. I'm not talking about scratches from an accident, where a scratch is the least of your worries. I mean the annoying ones left by tree branches and bushes, picked up while maneuvering, parking, or pulling off onto the shoulder.

You know that this small but irritating problem could send you to a body shop, where you'd pay a lot of money for very little work. So you start to wonder whether you could do the cosmetic repair yourself. You can try. In most cases it works.

Micro-scratches on fenders or doors can be removed with an abrasive polishing compound or polishing paste, available at any auto parts store. Put a small amount on a clean, coarse cloth and rub the damaged area with firm, circular motions. Polishes come in different grades that differ in the size of their abrasive particles. As you might guess, the finer the particles, the gentler the polish is on the paint.

Polishing compounds with coarser abrasives are typically used when a scratch is fairly deep but hasn't reached the primer layer. In that case you can use a machine polisher, but be very careful with it. Once the scratch has been leveled out, finish the job with a fine-abrasive polish.

If the scratch has gone down to bare metal, take the car to a body shop, even if the panel doesn't need any straightening. Only a shop with the right equipment can make that kind of "scrape" invisible. A scratch down to the metal needs rust-proofing, priming, sanding, polishing, paint color matching, and repainting of the damaged area. That is extremely hard to do at home.