Scratches

I did something stupid. I was putting gas in my 2016 R1200RT and got a couple spots of gas on the dark red paint. I grabbed the first thing I saw, some of those brown paper towels you see by the window squeegees, and wiped the gas spots up. In doing so I left some scratches on the paint. This bike looks brand new despite being 4 years old. Any suggestions on products to buff out the scratches, or is this something I will have to live with?l

Mother's Scratch Remover always works for me.

any super fine polishing compound will work

Sometimes you can remove very fine scratches with a Cleaner Wax.

The scratches are in the clear coat.

They will buff out.

Paint correction

I recently researched this for a car. After some digging around, I found this system called "Dr Color Chip" that has a series of instructional videos to accompany their wide range of correction products.

The main point they make is that our bikes, and our cars, have multiple layers of coatings. And some arbitrary scratch can be to a depth that penetrates multiple layers. This system gives you a way to fill the scratches with matching paint, and then wipe the gross excess off, and then further chemically smooth the surface, and finally apply clear coating. It is a comprehensive system that can correct scratches of varying depth so that they are hard to see. It is an alternative to complete repainting for high-end vehicles like our motos.

Although it is not ridiculously expensive, it still probably makes more economic sense for a car than a motorcycle because, unlike a car, the bodywork of our motorcycles is composed of lots of small pieces that can easily be removed and completely repainted. Still, it is cheaper than I recently paid for painting pieces on my moto, which averaged about $50 per piece plus the cost of coatings. For my moto, I paid about $300 for small quantities of 3 colors of paint plus clear, and then had about 14 pieces painted. If I had a few scratches in a single color, the Dr Color Chip kit would be a lot less expensive.

You will need to know your paint code to order. I bought some, and received my kit within a week from the USA.

cap

I would think any scratch 'created' by a paper towel will easily buff out with wax or clear coat safe polishing compound.

They'll buff out

Spending my life full time on yachts and race boats we have to deal with scuffs all the time. Big fan of the 3m brand cleaner wax as was mentioned above.

https://www.amazon.com/3M-09009-Mar...ocphy=9002242&hvtargid=pla-585748183185&psc=1

I would suggest just riding it until you don’t notice the scratch. Land is a better investment.

pbryant018 said:

I did something stupid. I was putting gas in my 2016 R1200RT and got a couple spots of gas on the dark red paint. I grabbed the first thing I saw, some of those brown paper towels you see by the window squeegees, and wiped the gas spots up. In doing so I left some scratches on the paint. This bike looks brand new despite being 4 years old. Any suggestions on products to buff out the scratches, or is this something I will have to live with?l

Click to expand...

Not a big deal. Buff it out. Google / Youtube is your friend. Or we could say..."your bike is ruined! Sell it cheap (to me?) and get a new one".

My guess is the scratches are just in the wax. Use a wax remover and reapply a good wax and I bet they are gone. I would hate to think a paper towel will actually scratch BMW clearcoat.