Scratches and stone chips

I gave Monty his first wash on Monday night (had to park him under some large trees over the weekend and he was covered in sap and bits of tree).

I spent £40 in Halfords on Meguiars Gold shampoo and wax, a sheepskin mitt and a microfibre polishing cloth. As the car is quite new and the paintwork is in pretty good shape, I didn't bother with a claybar.

There are, though, a couple of very fine scratches that are whitish in colour, and a few bruises where stones have chipped the top layer of lacquer. Monty is a metallic silver: could someone please advise me as how best to deal with these very minor blemishes?

Thanks in advance!

(I know it's a bit girlie to name my car, but all my cars have had names...Monty is Monty because of the Vermont bumper sticker).

And i thaught you named him after me (sorry couldn't resist)

i know im going to get linched for saying this but T-cut for metallic (Purple bottle) works well others on here swear by Meguras Scratch-X or autoglym paint restorer which will take out very minor scratches just take your time and dont go mad...

followed up by either Autoglyms Super resin polish (which will take some rubbing to polish the remains of the marks out. Or a lazy alternative is Autoglyms Ultra Deep Shine which fills minor swirl marks and scratches for a while.....

as for applicators i just use the cheap microfibre cloths from the supermarket ( a tight Yorkshire man through and through...)

Sorry to disappoint you, Andy!

Thanks very much for the info. I lived with a tight Yorkshireman for five years and dated him for nearly four before that...is it any wonder I spent £40 on stuff to clean and polish Monty?

I can't really hold it against you, cos my dad was born in the East Riding!

There are so many sayings about tight Yorkshire man, its a pity that so many are true, like never spend a pound when a penny will do, a Yorkshire man spends like a scotsman with his pockets sewn up and a Yorkshire man never underestimates his own importance.

and those white scratches can be a b*gger to fix. I have some on a dark blue SAAB which I have ended up T cutting, then an aerosol paint job, rubbing down and a polish. This is ok for what is an old car not sure that I would go down the same route for a new GP

Would like some feedback on the Scratch X results, magiars video of customers using their product on real deep scratches and getting perfect results looks very impressive

All promotional videos are impressive

yeah but that vid has about 15mins of frantic rubbing and cursing cropped out of the middle of it, and it was only for a 8x6" patch


as for marks that appear 'whtie' they are just in your lacquer/clearcoat.

can easily be removed with a bit of patiance.

clean car.
dry
use scratch x, AG paint restorer (pink bottle) or whatever equivilent you can find.
rub in hard according to instrutions (usually small polishing foam and parrellell strokes) until worked in fully (basically goes smooth and with AG paint restorer it dissapears/turns clear.
apply a bit more and don't rub so hard, be more gentle.
remove with clean microfibre.
wash that bit of paint again
apply AG SRP or similar
allow to residue then remove
apply a 2nd dollup of AG SRP and remove and then marvel, scratch has magically been removed/mostly covered.

Did this the other week with teh saab, some prick had caught the edge of the bumper (it has big jutty out bumpers) then driven off, managed to get it back pretty good (few deeper cuts from a previous drive off offense still there) and a few of the minor scratchs around the car completly removed.

prob took me an hour to get all the little marks off on the whole car, but worth it. tis now compeltly minty