# how to get rid of small scratches



## sa21189 (Feb 9, 2009)

my friend had this compound which i used on my car and the stuff worked like a miracle...a small amount of buffing and all of my small scratches that i had on my car disappeared, does anyone know what i'm talking about??


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## GroupBquattro (May 11, 2012)

I've seen the Fix-it commercials for a while now, and when I came across a store that sold it, I thought if it doesn't work, I'll lose 10 bucks. I didn' t lose the money, all minor scratches are gone. But only minor. It won't work on major key-like scratches.


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## thafool (Aug 27, 2007)

Mequiar's ScratchX 2.0 has been my miracle worker for a while now. See if this is the stuff your friend had, if not I think it will work just as well.

http://www.meguiars.com/en/automotive/products/g10307-scratchxreg-20/


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## sa21189 (Feb 9, 2009)

will this stuff also get rid of circle swells?


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## dboy11 (Mar 6, 2006)

sa21189 said:


> my friend had this compound which i used on my car and the stuff worked like a miracle...a small amount of buffing and all of my small scratches that i had on my car disappeared, does anyone know what i'm talking about??


What your buddy had was a product that filled the marring in rather than remove. To remove or correct marring it requires a orbital or rotary buffer. That's not saying you can't do a good job by hand but its a LOT of elbow grease.

What are you looking to do? I can make suggestions for online or OTC products.



thafool said:


> Mequiar's ScratchX 2.0 has been my miracle worker for a while now. See if this is the stuff your friend had, if not I think it will work just as well.
> 
> http://www.meguiars.com/en/automotive/products/g10307-scratchxreg-20/


This is a very aggressive product and would require a second stage of polishing to correct the hazing that SX leaves.


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## thafool (Aug 27, 2007)

Yeah - I guess I wasn't making the assumption that he wasn't doing anything else after the "buffing", and that it was something with a decent amount of cut since he only did a small amount of it. Either way, your point is well taken dboy - I should have asked whether he was putting it on by hand or polisher and a few other questions to narrow it down.

_sa21189: "will this stuff also get rid of circle swells?"_

The scratchX may be overkill for swirls - there is a less aggressive product Mequiar's makes called swirlX that you can start with, but in my admittedly limited experience, any good polish can get swirls out. For me it's been more about the right combination of pad and polish and using a orbiting polisher - doing it by hand just didn't work. Until you know what you're doing I'd recommend starting out with a fine cut polish or swirl remover and a low cut pad and do a test area to see if that does the trick, and then work up from there if needed. I had to go up to a medium cut polish to get the swirls out on the last car I bought. You'll need to go over everything a second time with a finer polish if you do move up to something more abrasive to clean it up too.

There are many people with a lot more experience on this forum and all kinds of posts on what products are good, so I'll leave those discussions for them, but I can tell you what worked for me using the Mequiar's stuff. I used a Porter Cable DA polisher and started with the Ultimate Polish - this didn't quite get all the swirls out. I moved up to the #83 DA Cleaner Polish and this got pretty much everything out. After that you can hit it with the ultimate again and wax/seal it.

After that the most important thing is to avoid putting swirls in your paint in the 1st place, and that's all about how you wash and dry - search forums for best process on that too. Read through the forums everyday for a few weeks and you may just be ready to start  .


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