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Polish Car - Remove Scratches and Scuff Marks by Hand

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Mark Boudreau: Hi! My name is Mark Boudreau and today, I am showing you how to remove light scratches and scuff marks from your vehicle's finish. Right now, we are going to remove a scuff mark and some light scratches by hand from a car using polish and rubbing compound. Let's start with the scuff mark. We have clean rag, onto which I have applied a little bit of polish. So with a light circular motion, I am going to apply the polish to the scuff mark and see if we can remove it; and as you can see, that scuff mark came right off. Now, we've flipped the rag over to a clean spot and now we are going to remove the rest of that polish in the circular motion until it's dry and we have a nice clean and shiny finish. You might need to flip the rag again and again, circular motion and see, it's gone. Now, let's look at the light scratches. Let's see if the polish will remove the light scratches, apply a little bit more polish, light circular motion and it looks like it has removed most of them. We are going to flip the rag over to continue. Well, it did not get them all out; so you can see we have some run ins of the light scratches here and two, but do not seem to want to come out with the polish. So, let us move up step to something a littlie bit more aggressive, the compound. We are going to shake that; apply that to a fresh area of the cloth and again light circular motion. Now, we are applying compound, something that is a little bit more aggressive than the polish. Flip the rag over to a clean spot. We have removed the bulk of the light scratches except for these two. We may need machine polishing to get these two scratches out. Now, we have also have some swirl marks that have been left over by the compound procedure. So, let's go ahead and remove the swirl marks that the compound left. We do that by moving them reverse using polish again, again little bit of polish on a clean spot on the rag, circular motion. I am using a fair amount of elbow grease at this point, got a very clean polished area and as I leave a few smears I move to a clean point on the rag and continue again until I can polish them off. Alright, we were able to remove all of the swirl marks left by the compound, but we still have two light scratches here or medium scratches; we are going to need to get out the machine polisher to get those off. That is what I am going to show you next, how to remove light to medium scratches from a car with a machine buffer.

Expert: Mark Boudreau

Spectrum Auto Painting & Collision Center

P: (703) 671-2402

When you step into Spectrum Auto Painting & Collision Center, you walk into an award-winning body shop that will immediately surpass your expectations. A clean reception area; greeted with a hello; comfortable seating; original art.The philosophy of the staff at Spectrum is "We are here to provide service. We just happen to fix cars." Mark Boudreau, who started Spectrum in 1993, says that when people More »