XSeries-forum

Woke up Saturday morning to this:


This is the off-side passenger door, front panel, drivers door and rear panel also have a long scratch on.

Managed to stop fuming now but does anyone know anyone in the Brighton/Sussex area who can fix this? I've a horrible feeling wet sanding might not be good enough but hopefully an expert can tell me for sure before I brace myself for any kind of respray.

Penny, I seem to remember you had some work done on your X5 by someone in Crawley who seemed to a do a brilliant job. Have you got their details please?

That sucks, always feel gutted when that sort of mindless sh*t happens. Hope someone can provide a sensible solution for you....

Hi Waka

God why oh why do people do that! My guy did the work in Coulsdon but he's semi retired and now gone into property development so a no go I'm afraid

AW8 might have a recommendation?

Sorry to see this waka - I'd go nuts too...

Think it might be kids????

I have no idea how deep that lot is but usually anything you can feel with a fingernail as a dip in the paintwork means a respray...

I know someone in London (near the Hoover building) on the A40 but no good to you having to leave the car etc (credit goes to Jeegnesh for the contact though). But let me know if I can put you in touch - he will need to see the car to quote you, so 2 trips...

OMG this is really awful! Mindless, stupid vandalism, usually down to pure jealousy! i'd be absolutely gutted too.

Can't help with a re-sprayer. If the colour coat is still mostly intact - you may just need a clearcoat blow over. A lot easier to fix than a colour spray. Let's hope.

Unbelievable ...

It looks too deep for any polishing repairs and a dealer respray would be at least £300 or so.

Sh**e..........

Sums up the scum of today I am afraid mate - gutted for you.

Bas""ds hope they get run over, have had it done to me the scum bags

will be some jealous t*at i had i done on a previous car, but i found out who it was! hope you can get it sorted cheaply

Hi Waka,

Feel for you mate..

Just some jealous f*cking low life scum

None of us can properly evaluate the car without seeing it.

Seeing/touching the car is required to determine most appropriate solution. Fingernail detectable scratches may often require respray but correction can still often improve matters. I have in the past yielded approx 85% correction on a neighbours black VW after her daughter scratched a smiley face on the door using the sharp edge of a stone !

I don't have rotary & only have a Meguiars G220. That said as well as various polishes I also have cutting pads, Megs 105 & I think a little G3 compound. I am currently low on wet & dry at the moment.

I am about 60-90 mins west of you depending on time of day travelled.

I genuinely have a lot on at moment, but could possibly make time to have a go at correction if you wanted,(& if after looking at the car I thought that was a realistic option)........I do not have access to a garage at the moment so weather would be a factor. I accept beer tokens btw

I dont have a Paint Thickness Gauge so if chancing deep correction then you would have to resign yourself to a later repray if correction went too deep or failed to sort matters !

Another technique which sits between machine correction & panel respray would be touching in the scratches with a very fine modelling artist brush to raise damaged/touched in areas then correcting the whole area. This is time consuming & dependant on the paint match. I am not a professional so it would be your risk/liability if we did this !

Failing correction I can put you in touch with a user friendly bodyshop near to me with an extractor equipped oven who if I sask him nicely might help you out for close to mates rates. You would have to leave car with him & thus would need to get someone to bring you over to him & run you back/forth.

Personally I would not attempt to sort this unless fairly satisfied this would not happen again in near future.

You may not like to hear this but it is quite possible that.....

i) You know or know of the person who did this.
ii) They had a motive for doing it.
iii) They will do it again & probably get away with it.

You may be able to reduce chances of this happening again if you avoid car being repeat parked at same location/time period. Ideally reducing future motivation for the person who did this would be best.

Of course if it's young kids then hopefully it was a one off incident.

Target hardening using a secure garage, suitable lighting, CCTV or alternative parking may be most beneficial.

Really sorry for you bud, it completley makes me sick to see this.

Had some pr1ck boot side my e53 driver door in last year thankfully managed to ease it out (95%) after stripping inside panel of and a wee bit of panel beating.

Like AW8 said just be sure its not some kind of vendeta against you. In meantime u can give a light polish with blue wax/polish It'll fill the scratchs a little, though not a permanant fix.

Absolute lazy jealous w4nkers... just want to smoke, drink and drug their money (or ur tax £'s) away, then sh1te on people who work and save to have something nice.

Bring back hanging is all I can say.

Damn, absolutely gutted for you.

AW8 has summed it up perfectly. I would definitely give correction a go first as you have nothing to lose. The finger nail test is a very good indicator but correction can mask a lot of it even it does not sort it totally.

Sorry to see this Waka
I can understand why rogues would steal stuff from your car (even though they should face the firing squad ) to make a profit or have for themselves, but this shit just annoys the hell out of me as it is just mindless jealousy and nobody gains.
Hope you get it sorted with the least amount of hassle and cost mate.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

@Sanj I did think it might be a kid, it almost looks like someone has tried to scribble on the side of the car. Glad the parents the were able to stop the little dear before too much damage was done

@AW8 thanks very much for the lengthy and considered reply. I'm not sure whether my rant above is true, but I've had the car for 2 years and always parked in the same road and haven't had a problem before, so hopefully this is a one-off. I live on a fairly busy road with no off-street parking and no residents parking scheme (despite my best efforts!) so CCTV is out as I can rarely park outside my house.

AW8 thank you again for the offer of help on having a look at this, I may well take you up on your kind offer in the New Year. I've got a DAS6-pro and megs polishes I've used in the past (but only for swirls, noting as major as this), and some very fine sandpaper (3000/2500 grit) I was going to use to repair some stone chips that the previous owner kindly 'touched up' with what looks airfix royal blue on my lovely Estoril blue car - but I haven't plucked up the courage yet! I did have the car professionally detailed not long after I bought it so I've still got the chart with all his paint depth gauge measurements on, which might be useful

As it now also has a collection of parking dings (from other people!) I thought I might treat the old girl to a day in a bodyshop. I don't really want large chunks resprayed so maybe an advanced detailer who's a whizz with wet sanding could help. I've seen some amazing results on detailing world.

Anyway, thanks again and hopefully we'll catch up soon