ScratchX 2.0 and clear coat

[MartinCA1980]

Hey guys... so i've searched the forum and unless i've missed something the consensus is that you can burn through the clear coat with ScratchX 2.0 because it's abrasive qualities.

i had a faint scratch visible under light that was bothering me and i had a bottle of ScratchX 2.0 handy... never used the product before or any other abrasive scratch remover but i'm just curious:
- I've washed the area of the car
-used micro fiber applicator to polish in the ScratchX 2.0 by hand... about medium strength (i'm not really all that strong lol)... and rubbed for about 30 seconds
-wiped off the residue with a clean towel...

still some scratches but they're tiny enough and visible only under light that i dont care.


so the main scratch seems to be gone (at least for now?)... but now i got thinking... if i only used it by hand did i take off quite a bit of clear coat? what if i had to redo another scratch in the same area in a year or two? considering i'm doing this by hand just how abrasive would this product be for multiple uses before i ran into trouble?

My car is a honda so paint has a reputation to be thin and soft though my car hasn't had any work like this done to it before.

what do you guys think?

[ChevyNick]

Well think about it, if you said the scratch was faint to begin with, and you got rid of most of it, you didn't really remove much clear coat to begin with. I'm pretty sure you could go over the area in the future if you need to.

[MartinCA1980]

Re: ScratchX 2.0 and clear coat

lol forgive my "noob"-ness... i'm not sure what to expect in terms of how deep the layer of clear coat actually is... i mean sure they have some microscoping ratings on those paint gages... i just wasn't sure how easy it is to rip through the clear coat with this product working by hand... although i'm hoping it's not so easy... since i've read of people doing multiple applications with machine application.

[Murr1525]

Re: ScratchX 2.0 and clear coat

It sounds like you are quite safe to use again if needed.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: ScratchX 2.0 and clear coat

The reality here is that you can rub through the clear coat by hand with almost anything, including baby oil and a terry cloth towel. What you never want to do with any product is to apply a lot of pressure for an extended period of time in a very tiny area - and that could be as little as 60 to 90 seconds if you're concentrating your energy in a very tiny area. Almost every time we see someone actually go through their clear is when they do exactly that - work very aggressively in a very tiny area, usually to remove a fairly deep and isolated scratch.

So, with the scratch you were dealing with, could you feel it with your fingernail? If so, and if you then try to fully remove it, you may work at that one little spot for so long that you do indeed go through your clear coat. That's because a typical factory applied clear coat is only about 2 mils thick (that's 2/1000 of an inch, which is as thin as it sounds). So if you can feel the scratch then, as you might imagine, relative to that 2 mils of clear the scratch is pretty darn deep. And if you try to remove it fully that means you need to level the surrounding paint down to the bottom of the scratch, which means you're taking off quite a bit of paint and you do run the risk of going through the clear.

Yes, ScratchX 2.0 contains an abrasive, but so does anything that will actually remove below surface defects like scratches, swirl marks, etchings, etc. The only way to remove these defects is to remove at least some amount of paint. But swirls are so incredibly shallow that the amount of paint you remove in order to make them go away is insignificant - assuming it's done correctly. Isolated scratches, in their varying depths, require greater levels of paint removal. The trick is knowing when you've reached the limit of what can be safely removed, and when to admit that some discretion is in order and accept that you'll have to live with the remnants of that scratch.

[MartinCA1980]

Re: ScratchX 2.0 and clear coat

Well... if i gently ran the tip of my finger over it i just barely (borderline couldn't ) feel it... maybe it somewhat placebo? it was closer to feeling some of the swirlmarks that a buffer would leave on a poor dealership style detail job.
the area i worked was closer to foot by foot and it was closer to like 15-20 seconds followed by just wiping off the residue

there's no marring or any other indications something's wrong....was just curious more less how much clear coat would something like that take off... and to be honest if you say 60 seconds by hand with a micro fiber pad it scares me enough to be absolutely certain i NEED to do it next time to attempt it. you say a lot of pressure.... that's very subjective... i wasn't pushing really hard... more like a firm rub with 3 fingers... and again... there's no issue at this point... of course you need abrasion to level the scratches... i was just more curious with info for the future.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: ScratchX 2.0 and clear coat

the area i worked was closer to foot by foot and it was closer to like 15-20 seconds followed by just wiping off the residue

This description is exactly the way the product should be used - you did it just the way we would teach someone to do it properly.

Your trepidation is fully understandable, but if you keep doing things like this you shouldn't have any issues at all. It's only when you really concentrate on that tiny area, hardly any bigger than the scratch itself, and you really lean into it for a couple of minutes, that you run the risk of causing serious damage. It sounds like you were far, far, far from doing anything evenly remotely resembling that, so no worries at all.

It should be noted that the abrasives in ScratchX 2.0 are very small and very refined, which accounts for the very positive result you obtained using it. We'd be willing to bet that if you had taken paint thickness readings before and after your process, you wouldn't see a difference. That's how minuscule an amount of paint was removed.