Scratch Repair for Scarborough Drivers

Dock rub on a Progress Avenue van is a different job from a keyed door

A cube van that backs onto a loading dock along Progress or Ellesmere three times a day carries its history on the rear doors: black rubber transfer, a band of scuffing at dock-bumper height, and, where the rubber has picked up grit, a set of fine parallel scratches through the clear. Most of it polishes out. What does not is the season’s worth of grit that has gone through the colour, and on a white van the grey primer showing through is the tell. Taxis bring the same in a different place — a lower door or a rocker scraped along every curb between the Town Centre and the Bluffs.

For a working vehicle the question is not only what the repair is but when the vehicle can be earning again. We book it so that a polish happens while the driver waits, and so that a refinish goes into the booth the morning the van arrives, with the materials already on the bench. Turnaround is usually a day for polish and a few days for paint; a rear door that has to be repaired through the colour is the longer end of that.

What light, water and a detailer’s polish tell you before we do

You can read the depth of a scratch without a shop. Wet it: if the line disappears while the panel is wet and returns as it dries, the scratch is in the clear coat, and a polish will take it out. Look at it against the sky: a clear-coat scratch is a bright hairline; a scratch into the colour is dull and the same colour as the car; a scratch that shows white or grey has reached the primer; one that shows bright silver or brown has reached the steel. If a detailer has already tried a polish and the line faded but stayed, it is through the clear and into the colour, and polishing harder only thins the clear around it.

Colour-depth scratches are touched, levelled and blended, and the panel polished so the repair disappears. Primer-depth and metal-depth scratches mean a refinish, blended into the panel beside it, and on a car that has sat through a Scarborough winter with bare steel exposed we check the edges for rust before we quote, because it is often there. Where the scratch sits matters too: a flat door blends easily, while a line across a fender crease or the corner of a bumper cover is two surfaces at two angles. On a bumper the cover is painted complete as a part, and on a metallic the adjacent fender is blended so the plastic does not read as a step.

• Clear-coat scratches polished, often while you wait
• Colour-depth scratches touched, levelled and blended along their length
• Primer or metal scratches refinished, with the edge checked for rust
• Any panel we refinish carries the lifetime paint warranty

Hedges off Midland, the Town Centre lot, and which scratches are a comprehensive claim

The rest of Scarborough’s scratches come from home and from the lot. A cedar hedge grown out over a driveway off Midland leaves a long shallow line down a rear quarter that is mostly clear coat until it reaches the arch. A fence post at the mouth of a mutual driveway catches the same corner every time. The Scarborough Town Centre lot leaves the marks nobody admits to: a cart, a bicycle pedal, a key.

The deliberate ones are a claim question. A key line is vandalism, which falls under comprehensive coverage with your normal deductible and no fault against you. It is reported to police online or at a station rather than at a Collision Reporting Centre, because no other vehicle was involved. A single door often prices near the deductible and a key line across three panels usually does not, so we write both figures before you call your insurance company.