Road Rash

[bobschultz]

I have an 09 911 that is not a daily driver but used for spirited drives in the north GA mountains.  As such, road rash has become an issue.  When I bought the car, I was told it was too late for a clear bra so I just kept the front cleaned and polished after each use using ONRWW and GPS.  Looking closer now in the correct light, the road rash is still there even after using a compound and a DA buffer with an orange pad.  Its better then before but still unacceptable at least to me.  Question, should I use a more robust compound like Optimum Hyper Compound and a wool pad followed by a polish or will Optimum clear coat restorer correct the rash to an acceptable level?  I would obviously rather avoid a respray.

Thanks in advance

Bob

 

[Ron@Optimum]

Bob, if you can correct with Hyper Compound and wool pad, that's the way to go - factory clear is superior to CCR.   If you need to use CCR,  be sure to remove any compound/polish residue and oxidation.

[bobschultz]

Okay thanks Ron, I’ll order the HC and let you know how it turns out. 

 

Bob 

[Setec Astronomy]

"Road rash" like that on the front of the car is usually stone chips, and that's what it looks like in the picture.  You can't remove those because the paint is missing there...if you polish down to the level of that chip you will have to remove the paint down to the primer.

If you have a scratch in the clearcoat, you can "remove" the scratch by polishing down the surrounding paint to the level of the scratch...so in actuality, you aren't removing the scratch, you are removing the paint around the scratch.  If there is no paint where your defect is, you can't do that.  (Mike Phillips has some good tutorials on this, with graphics)

What does work fairly well (I haven't tried it myself) is Dr. Colorchip, which is a touch-up method to fill in those multiple chips.  Although I can see some benefit to CCR as possibly preventing corrosion of those chips, I don't see it having an appearance benefit in this case, but that's just my speculation.

[Ron@Optimum]

It's a matter of degree, is the scratch through the paint in which Setec is correct, it needs at least touch up.  If not, CCR will at least protect the paint from further deterioration.  Again Optimum's recommendation is to keep your existing clear coat as long as possible, but CCR will protect/correct road rash if necessary.  There are very good videos on youtube by Yvan LaCroix on CCR application.