Paint correction in Lakemba

Think of a scratch as a trench in the top layer of paint. You either fill the trench, or you lower the ground on either side until there is no trench. That is the whole of it, and which one you are being sold is the question to ask.

Filling is what glazes and filler-heavy polishes do. It looks identical on the day and it washes out within weeks, at which point the swirls are back and you have paid for nothing. If a quote seems very cheap for correction, this is usually what is being sold.

We do the second thing. An abrasive compound on a machine polisher removes a tiny, measured layer of clear coat until the surface is flat again. The scratch has not been covered. The paint around it has been brought down to its level, and it is gone.

The colour change afterwards is the giveaway that it worked. Light reflects off a level surface as a sharp image instead of a haze, so a black car that looked grey in the sun looks black again. On dark paint people struggle to believe it is the same car.

Counterintuitive, but usually yes, and lightly. Transport contamination and dealer lot washing leave marring on most deliveries, and dark colours show all of it.

The advantage of doing it at delivery is that the correction needed is minimal, often a single stage. Less correction means less clear coat removed, and the coating goes onto the best surface that car will ever have.

Do it three years in and you are paying for a full correction as well as the coating, on paint with less thickness left to work with.

Correction is the expensive part of any detailing job, and the washing that follows decides how long it lasts.

Automatic brush washes will put the swirls straight back within a handful of visits. So will a single bucket and a dirty mitt.

Two buckets with grit guards, pH-neutral shampoo, clean plush microfibre for drying. Or a coating, which makes correct washing considerably easier and more forgiving.

If that sounds like effort, we handle scheduled maintenance washes.

Paint hardness varies enormously between makes. Many Japanese and Korean clear coats are soft and correct quickly but haze easily. German clear coats are often hard and take far longer to cut, and some newer ceramic-hardened clears are harder again.

That changes the pad, the compound and the time, which is why the make is the first thing we ask. A combination that is perfect on a hard clear coat will wreck a soft one, and vice versa.

The test section settles it. Before the car is committed to anything we polish one small area with the gentlest combination likely to work and check it in the sun. Then we know.

Matte and satin paint cannot be machine polished. The finish gets its look from a textured top layer that scatters light, and polishing flattens that texture, which leaves a glossy patch that cannot be undone.

The same goes for a vinyl wrap or a satin protection film. Scratches in those are handled by the film maker’s own products or by replacing the panel of film, not by a polisher.

If your car is matte and it has marks in it, call anyway. There are cleaning approaches that improve it, and we would rather tell you what is possible than have someone polish a patch into it.