Guide · Symptoms
Most cars give warning before a scratch repair becomes urgent. The signs below are the ones that matter, and the useful skill is telling them apart from the faults that look identical from the driver's seat.
Run a fingernail across the scratch. If it does not catch, the scratch is in the clear coat and a machine polish will remove it completely in an afternoon. If it catches, there is colour missing and it needs filling before it can be polished. That one test is the whole diagnosis, and it is why a scratch quote should never be given over the phone.
Symptoms are evidence, not diagnoses. A noise, a warning light or a change in how the car behaves narrows the field — it does not close it — and the gap between the two is where money gets wasted on parts that were fine. We test before replacing, every time, because the alternative is you paying to find out.
A scratch you cannot feel with a fingernail is above the colour layer and comes out with abrasive polishing, because polishing works by levelling the clear coat down to the base of the mark. One you can feel has gone through the clear and no amount of polishing will bring the missing colour back.
Machine polishing removes microns of clear every time. A panel that has been aggressively polished several times has very little left, and once it is gone the base coat is exposed and the panel needs a full refinish. Repeated cheap polishing is not free — it spends a finite resource.
If the symptom changes under load, gets worse with heat, or brings a warning light with it, it has moved from "watch it" to "book it". In Dubai the heat variable is not a footnote — a fault that is intermittent in February is continuous in July, and the failure usually happens on the hottest afternoon rather than the coolest.
If your fingernail does not catch in it, yes — a machine polish removes it entirely. Anything deeper needs paint.
A polish-out on one panel is the low end. A fill-and-blend repair costs more but still far less than a full panel respray. We quote after seeing the depth.
Machine polishing is mobile. Anything that needs paint and a controlled environment happens at the workshop.
Call, or send your location on WhatsApp. We will tell you the price before we set off.
