Scratch Repair in Agincourt

Two cars, one driveway

The most Agincourt scratch there is happens before seven in the morning. Two cars share a driveway built for one, the one behind has to go first, and in the dark it brushes the cedar hedge on one side or the garbage bin on the other. The result is a set of fine parallel lines down a door and a quarter panel, sometimes just in the clear coat, sometimes into the colour where the bin handle caught. Next in line is the garage trim: a mirror or a bumper corner dragged along the door frame of a 1960s single garage that was never wide enough.

The plazas add a different kind. Keys and rings along a door in the plaza rows off Glen Watford, cart edges across a rear quarter at the Midland supermarkets, and the long curving scuff a bumper corner picks up from a concrete post in the Agincourt Mall lot. Kennedy Road contributes stone chips on the hood and the leading edge of the roof from trucks, and those chips go through to primer more often than a scratch does.

Read the depth, then decide

The quickest check is whether a fingernail drawn along the mark slides over it or catches. A slide means the line sits in the clear coat and can almost always be polished out — we cut the clear with a fine compound and bring the gloss back, no paint involved. A catch means the scratch is into the colour or the primer, and the honest fix is paint: sand the area, prime where bare metal shows, apply colour matched to your car, and blend it into the surrounding panel so the repaired section has no edge.

We do not sell paint for scratches that polish out, and we do not polish scratches that need paint — a compound will only hide the line for a few washes. Where a scratch crosses two panels, both are refinished together so the colour reads the same across the gap. Silver, white pearl and the dark metallic greys that fill Agincourt driveways all need blending to disappear; a solid black or white can sometimes be spot-repaired inside the panel. The refinish carries a lifetime warranty.

• Clear-coat scratches polished, not painted
• Colour and primer scratches refinished and blended
• Stone-chip runs on hoods treated as one repair, not twenty
• Photo estimate in writing before you book anything

Fitting the repair into a Sheppard errand

A polish is quick, and it can be done while you wait or on a lunch break, so plenty of Agincourt drivers pair it with a Fairview Mall run — we are next door. A painted scratch is a couple of days, because the panel has to be prepped, sprayed, cured and reassembled. If you have the second car at home the drop-off is simple; if not, and the scratch is part of a claim, the rental comes through your coverage.

For the photos, shoot the scratch from straight on and again from a low angle in daylight, so we can see whether the line has depth. A shot of the whole panel helps us plan the blend. Our estimator looks at them, prices the repair in writing, and says which kind of scratch you have.