Ford Focus Scratch repairs

londonTiger

learn to do it yourself, its a skill that will come in use for a long time to come. also i wouldnt bother doing these cosmetic tweaks on a car i'm selling.. it might be better to just knock the price down and sell it, becauae any work you do on paintwork will not be appreciated by the new buyer.

It's better to just knock off £300 for paint defects than spend £500 repairing it. Chances are the new buyer will think he's getting a great bargain and the paint repairs won't be more than 50 quid to fix.. hahaha.

londonTiger

p.s you may be able to use temporary fillers like turtle wax colour magic chip sticks for light chips.. it is a pigmented formula that masks light scratches very well

Kamran

allan673 wrote: »

i am a detailer / valeter, i specialise in machine polishing, paint correction and protection.
look at the db9 pics here, before and after.
im sure it will give you an idea.

also £1450 is a rip off.
where are you from as i know excellent painters.

I'm in South London (Croydon/Bromley/Beckenham area). Any good recommendations would be appreciated!

Kamran

londonTiger wrote: »

learn to do it yourself, its a skill that will come in use for a long time to come. also i wouldnt bother doing these cosmetic tweaks on a car i'm selling.. it might be better to just knock the price down and sell it, becauae any work you do on paintwork will not be appreciated by the new buyer.

It's better to just knock off £300 for paint defects than spend £500 repairing it. Chances are the new buyer will think he's getting a great bargain and the paint repairs won't be more than 50 quid to fix.. hahaha.

I see your point, but surely a scratch (however big or small) on >3 panels of the car would knock the price down more than just £300? Personally, if I were buying a new car for myself I'd steer clear of the ones that had a couple of scratches in the first place. By not having these repaired am I not just limiting my audience?

Also I've tried T-Cut and similar wax type products, they seem to initially make a slight difference (not enough to solve the problem) but eventually they wear off in my experience.

allan673

Kamran wrote: »

I'm in South London (Croydon/Bromley/Beckenham area). Any good recommendations would be appreciated!

its a shame you cant come to me.
detailers in london charge the earth.
ive travelled as far as bedford before for a customer.

Kamran

allan673 wrote: »

its a shame you cant come to me.
detailers in london charge the earth.
ive travelled as far as bedford before for a customer.

I think you're a fair bit up north. Know of any recommended places in/around London?

Cheers

AlexisV

Find a local one man band and email him some photos for a quote.

Have you tried Autoglym Paint Restorer? A good scrub with that gets rids of the light surface scratches.

londonTiger

post a pic up here, we can gauge the level of work required and a good idea of the cost required. I think the £1800 quotes you're getting are for complete resprays which is understandable, resprays are labour intensive and time intensive. There's so much work that goes into preparation which can add to costs.

If it's minor isolated chips and clear coat/paint scrtaches these can be filled up and smoothed out pretty cheaply. When I first did it, it was really daunting, puitting sandpaper to your car paint and watchin it immediately get scratched up is scary. Buit follow the steps, go finer grit each step and then a polishing compound and you get decent results.

Kamran

londonTiger wrote: »

post a pic up here, we can gauge the level of work required and a good idea of the cost required. I think the £1800 quotes you're getting are for complete resprays which is understandable, resprays are labour intensive and time intensive. There's so much work that goes into preparation which can add to costs.

If it's minor isolated chips and clear coat/paint scrtaches these can be filled up and smoothed out pretty cheaply. When I first did it, it was really daunting, puitting sandpaper to your car paint and watchin it immediately get scratched up is scary. Buit follow the steps, go finer grit each step and then a polishing compound and you get decent results.

Great, thanks. I'll post some pics up asap.:T

BiigDawg

You are probably not too far from Gillingham.

KDS - They are arguably the best car detailers in the game. For references, just check detailingworld.co.uk. They also do body work resprays etc. I think for £1500 you will be able to get a full respray on a focus. It maybe worth you getting a quote from them.

http://www.kdskeltec.co.uk/detailing.phtml