Sanded down too far...

Was sanding out where someone had keyed my car, and got a little over eager with the sandpaper...





Is there ANYTHING I can do to minimize this damage short of taking it to a body shop??

ah man, you burned it. gotta bondo now

Spray back your original coat and then clear and buff.. would recomend doing the whole door.

When you start to see cloudiness in your paint it means you went past the clearcoat into the paint. The patch to the right exposed a black patch meaning you went past the clear and paint into the primer itself. A good tool to have when wet sanding or damp sanding would be a paint thickness gauge, but I know not everyone can afford one that's why I don't perform any wetsanding on any vehicle atm.
A little advice to you before you started wetsanding is the general rule of seeing how deep the scratch is to see if your finger nail can catch it or not.

If you can not feel the scratch then you can carefully touch up wet sand it. Meaning rip off a 2"x2" of sand paper and tape off the rest of the scratch surroundings and carefully go at it. What you did was treating the key mark as a panel instead of an isolated mark which is what a key mark is. The only way to fix this is to get it repainted unfortunately.

YounGLeMoN said:

. What you did was treating the key mark as a panel instead of an isolated mark which is what a key mark is.

Click to expand...

Yeah, they keyed my hood, fender and the right side. All of it went perfect... except the side. Which I did last. I guess I was tired by that point? :/


Would getting some taffeta white spray paint and lightly spray on some color work at all? Then afterwards add new clear coat?

Would getting some taffeta white spray paint and lightly spray on some color work at all? Then afterwards add new clear coat?[/QUOTE]

Not really. The best way to fix that is to wetsand the entire door, spray your base coat on the area needing color, then clearcoating the entire door again. Then possibly wetsand again and buff. You will need to take that to a shop.

Aw man that sucks. I know how you feel, I still have a key mark on my drivers side door/fender where my ex gf keyed my car while I was at work.

Alright, I took the plunge and tried fixing it my self. Turned out almost perfect! CERTAINLY much much better than it was. It's only visible at certain angles/lighting conditions. Here's what I did:



Buffed using 3M Rubbing Compound
Polished using 3M Scratch Remover
Clay bar
Washed with rubbing alcohol
Used 3000 Grit 3M Sandpaper
Scotchbrite pad
Washed using alcohol
Carefully taped up along the pin stripe, door handle, etc. (Back taped along the body line and in the middle of the door)
Misted on couple coats of Taffeta White
Lightly sprayed on a couple more coats of Taffeta White until the dark areas were no longer visible
Removed taping
Let dry overnight
Wet sanded with 3M 3000 Grit sandpaper
Buffed using 3M Rubbing Compound
Polished using 3M Scratch Remover



I was only looking to make this invisible to the average person, which I believe I succeeded in doing. I'm sure one of you guys could spot it a mile away with one eye closed and your back turned, but to the layman it's good.

Good work! I'm glad you took the incentive to tackle on this project yourself. It's very easy to mess up if you're rushing and by the looks of it you got it all under control.

who the hell wet sands key scratches >__<

did you do any research on this before attempting it ????

the results are ok but the lighting and angle could be hiding a lot