Hello there. Does anyone know of a good touch up specialist in the Northern New Jersey area, near Morris County, that does very good spot airbrushing touch up work? I had a small scratch in the clearcoat of my brand new atomic silver IS. After steadily rubbing with a smooth microfiber cloth for a good five minutes the white started to show through which to my surprise must be the bumper plastic. I've done this many times before with other cars and more invasively without going through the paint.

Odd thing is that the surface is still level with no unevenness in the area where rubbed so there must be literally one coat of paint on the bumper.

Becsuse the spot is on the left side of the bumper in an inconspicuous spot, I do not want to have to be paint the whole bumper. I am looking to see if you guys know anyone in the area that does really good spot airbrushing. I had a Volvo with electric silver paint that had a 2 inch scratch on the bumper and was fixed via airbrushing and it came out perfect but the person who does it moved out of state.

Below is a picture. As you can imagine I'm a little discouraged being that the car is only one month old! Any advice is appreciated. Thank you.

 

^^ bump ^^

 

Anyone?? Thx.

 

Really? Nobody knows of a skilled painter that can spot repair paint in NJ?

 

You were just rubbing with an MF towel? Not using any kind of scratch remover or compound? If you went through anything, what you went through was the clear coat. The bumper urethane material is actually black, not white.

Even going through the clear coat by hand would be hard to believe though...

 

i used Quixx Scratch Remover and guess I rubbed too hard. Never had this problem using it on previous cars and even more aggressively.

The car is 2 months old. Does this mean that I have defective paint?

 

I would be totally shocked if you were able to burn through the clear coat using a product like that by hand...totally shocked. I wonder if it would buff out...

 

You tell me. I was rubbing and suddenly the silver turned white. Here are more pictures to show. Even the white lines above the white spot look like scratch but it's just discoloration from the cloth fibers. Surface is completely smooth though.

 

I bet you this is just surface marring and can be polished out. I would take it to a good detailer.

 

No surface marring. I just used the same product on a white Mercedes bumper vigorously to remove a scratch on the same pad and no paint transfer. I then used the same pad on the Lexus using very little pressure and look at what happened within a few passes ... you can see the paint comes off.

Am I missing something? Is this a defect worth pressing the dealer about or should I have it painted myself?

 

I would pursue it with the Lexus dealer. That shouldn't happen, and you certainly shouldn't have any paint transfer on a clear coated car.

 

what if I burned through the clearcoat?

 

That should be impossible with a microfiber towel and an over the counter scratch remover.

 

While I agree that a mildly abrasive polish/scratch remover should not burn through the clear coat, the pictures sure look to me like the clear coat has been burned through, and the color transferred to the polishing pad would also lead one to believe that the clear has been burned through.

On the picture with the zoomed in area, the horizontal scratches above the dulled area look like what would been created by using a more abrasive rubbing compound than what would have resulted from a mildly abrasive polish/scratch remover. If a rubbing compound was used, it could easily have burned through the clear coat, and it could have done so very quickly.

 

It does look that way to me as well