What did the dealer do to my car??

[IAmTheWalrus]

Hi guys,

So Last week I bought a volvo and it had some scratches on the side of the car. It Looked like the scratches were just lacquer deep. Anyway I rubbed it and it seems that the scratches would disappear. The dealer asked his assistant to do something with some product, which I don't have the name of but it was a yellow bottle. He applied the product using a drill and a small round thing to spread it around. The car then looked like new. However after a week it looked like the scratches came back. Some car detailer I asked for quotes from suggest he used some kind of scratch filler and now after a week of rain it's showing the scratches again. Does anyone here have any suggestions on long term solutions? Should I buy some kind of light abrasive and a drill piece to get rid of the scratch and wax it? Or if I knew what the filler he used was shall I just use it again and then wax the vehicle to protect it?

[IAmTheWalrus]

G3 sounds and looks familiar however if it's an abrasive compound this does not explain the reappearance of the scratches. I have spoken with a detailer and they believe it merely had a scratch filler which has dissolved out.

[IAmTheWalrus]

Hi thanks for your response, yesterday I took it to the local car wash and asked them what they could do with the scratches, they suggested polishing and it looked great afterwards. I then bought on the advice of a person at halfords g3 Pro. Since buying this I have not used it but now having read your response I am now wondering if I should take it back. My intention long term is to wax the car every six months. If I use the product should it be OK in regards to the look of the car if the wax protects it? The g3 Pro describes itself as an an application that is permanent so maybe its a different version of the one used by the dealer, it certainly looks different. Thanks for the advice.

[IAmTheWalrus]

ok so having used g3 pro on the car back in November, I took it for a car wash today and can see streaks on the car from the fact the g3pro has scratch fillers in it (I've been told) and the appearances, albeit better looking, of scratches are back. Can I simply use scratch filler again and then just wax the car regularly? My concern is I am not wanting to damage the car by over-using the g3 product. Thanks in advance.

[IAmTheWalrus]

Rich1973 said:

You mentioned that you spoke to a detailer in your opening post. Why not go back to them and ask them for advice and if the scratches can be removed by polishing them out.
With respect, you appear to be revisiting the same question several times.

I'm trying to do this myself as I don't want to pay a detailer to do it.

[IAmTheWalrus]

donkmeister said:

Can I suggest watching a load of videos on YouTube by people such as Ammo NYC? Other detailer/paint correction people are out there, but I find his videos quite accessible to someone like me who doesn't even own a machine polisher. He goes into a lot of the detail around paint thickness, what you're doing when you cut/polish paint and so-on. Importantly, he also demonstrates when the best you can do without re-painting is to reduce the visual impact of a scratch rather than to make it disappear.

Quite correctly, you have identified that you don't want to repeatedly use cutting compound and eventually burn through your paint. Personally, as a novice, I'd just use the Auto Glym SRP and see how it looks. It's surprising what that will hide, as someone says above it's more of a filler/glaze. It doesn't need reapplying too often either. Once a year will generally do.

Well I have been watching videos, I followed one but was just alarmed I still ended up with the scratches revealed two months later and I am indeed scared of going down to the paint.

Was just hoping we can cover the filler with wax to hold it though apparently people on this list don't have any experience of this. Might be worth experimenting maybe with a scratch filler and then wax and see what happens in two months time.