Bummer...I scraped the driver-side corner of my front bumper against a cement pillar. See the scrapes and white paint transferred from the pillar below.

So far I've tried wiping down the white paint with a little WD40 which didn't seem to help. I read in a thread in the maintenance forum that rubbing alcohol and wax are worth a shot too, but before I run out to buy them I was wondering if a Clay Bar kit like the $15 one from Mother's would be my best shot here outside of getting the paint removal done in a body shop? Any helpful tips or opinions on possible options are welcomed, thank you.






In the first picture the scratches look pretty bad, but in the second you can see that it was fairly shallow and most of the damage looks to be just white paint transfer.

 

just use some cleaner wax like meguiars or mothers and rub til your arm falls off. I had a yellow vw beetle run in to my new car back in 2002 its dark bronze, and the cleaner wax took it all off, took about an hour. good luck

 

Stop by a body shop and give the guy $5-10 to buff the spot. With some compouind and a buffer some of that will come off. After that is done then you can decide whether it is good enough or that you need to paint.

 

Or buy rubbing compound for $5-10. Get the turtle wax one that comes in a round fat dylinder which is about two inches high and 5-6 inches in diameter. Also get a bottle of liquid compound that you can put on a cloth or rag and then buff. It really comes in handy.

It looks like it's just paint which is no problem and can be compunded out. Just clean the area first with soap and water and dry it and then getting to rubbing compounds...

And then just apply a wax to protect everything. Claying is mainly to get rid or the tiny imperfections of your paint, not for buffing. Clay will make a surface really smooth.

WAX IS ONLY A PROTECTANT THAT YOU PUT ON. IT DOESN'T TAKE ANYTHING OFF. I've seen this so much and for some reason everyone thinks wax can do everything to a car...

Thanks for posting pictures to help us out a little. Now go get some compound and a rag and get up some "before and after" pictures....

JOE

 

Get some Meguiars ScratchX.

 

I'm with Ted go spend 5 - $20 at a body shop and have a painter buff it

 

Excuse for a bodykit

 

The High speed buffer works wonders. If you were here in Atlanta and stopped by my shop I would apply a buffer to that no charge....just to see if you really wanted to paint it (not just for you but any customer with the same damage.....but many shops aren't as generous as I).

 

yep, a small shop might do it for free a large shop will charge

 

Thanks for the tips. So I'm guessing that the high speed buffer will help "sand down" and remove most of the white paint that's on top of my clear coat, leaving a super thin layer of white that hopefully the rubbing compound will remove?

 

the buffing should remove 99% of the white paint, the problem is whats under that paint may not be the blue paint, it might be raw plastic

 

At least I won't have to worry about rust, hah. Maybe I'll get some price quotes from the dealer on bumper repaint as well, before I do this...

 

Try to find a good independent shop rather than the dealer. (there is no guarantee that the dealer does good body work anyway). If you can it will likely save you some money.

 

Sorry for the late follow-up, but the good news is that I was able to remove pretty much all of that white paint in my original post above.

I had access to a bottle of Meguiar's Scratch-X and rubbed the paint spots with a microfiber towel for a while. (I have a suspicion that perhaps polish or wax and could have worked to some degree as well since they substitute as a rubbing medium too, but I can't confirm since I haven't tried them...) Maybe I got lucky and the paint used on the parking garage pillar my bumper grazed was "weak" or something.

I dabbed a little bit of the Meguiar's onto the white paint and let it sit for a minute+. Then I put the microfiber over my index finger and rubbed away. The white paint started breaking up into little bits over time and basically broke loose.

There is one spot where the bare bumper is noticeably exposed, which you can see in the picture below. As long as the sun isn't hitting the bumper directly into view, it's pretty hard to tell that it's scratched now.

Next up is Blue Onyx Pearl touch-up and clear coat for the bald spot. Maybe if I can save some dough I'll have a professional shop do it.

 

For that big a gouge any little spot repair will make mediocre results. o good technician armed with a detail gun could make a nearly invisible repair painting only a small area of the bumper say perhaps about 5 inchs around. The only problem is that often the edges of this newly sprayed clearcoat will show as a slightly dull area at some point. The repair may be buffed in so this dulling is not seen right away but most times after some weathering it will reappear. The cost to have a shop do this little spray in touch up should be in the $150-300 range I am assuming that they have to mix a pint of paint for a cost of about $65 (there should be alot left get it if this is the case as you paid for it). if I was going to quote that spot in my shop I would charge about $200. A better repair is to remove the bumper, dissassemble it, fix an prime the spot (as well as maybe any exisiting rock chips in the face of it) and repaint, reclearing the entire piece. No dissimilar paint edges to deteriorate. If I was quoting this in my shop (i just ran the numbers in my computer estimate system based on your photo) assuming fixing the spot you show and an additional hour for fixing some rock chips across the front, and came up with $350 total. By the way if you have this done there will still likely be some paint left over at the shop ask for it for later touchup or another repair event. So yeah a really good repair is a little more but not a lot more. Anything short of sanding and priming, and then spraying paint and clear over this spot will result in marginal results. DO NOT pay a shop to brush paint this, their result if brushing will not be significantly better than yours.

 

Thank you as always, Ted! I will keep all of that in mind.

 

this is great info. hopefully i will never have to use it but still nice post...

jake

 

A couple of people suggested rubbing compound. Sometimes it's required but it can be too agressive at times. Before going to rubbing compound see if regular toothpaste will remove a mess. Think of toothpaste as a mild rubbing compound (which it is).

Also, wax can take off various adhering dirt/paint, but not because of any scrubbing or abrasive qualities but because it acts as an emulsifier and can actually get between dirt and paint.