Scuff & Scratch Repairs in Stockport

It will, but it takes more work on some finishes than others. Every vehicle carries a manufacturer paint code and the basecoat is mixed to it, which gets you most of the way there. The difficulty with the dark metallics and pearls common on Stockport driveways is that the flake or pearl has to lie the same way in the new paint as in the old, or the repair flashes differently as you walk past it.

That is handled by spraying in thin passes and blending outwards into the surrounding panel rather than stopping at the edge of the damage, then lacquering over the blend and machine polishing the whole area. On cars where the original finish has faded with age, we match to the panel as it looks now rather than to the factory formula. If a colour cannot be matched properly on a driveway, we say so and move the job to the body shop.

• SK1 and SK2 town centre and multi storey parking
• SK3 and SK4 residential streets
• Cheadle and the SK8 roads
• Bramhall and SK7 driveways
• Hazel Grove and the A6 corridor
• SK5 and SK6 towards the Pennine edge

Bramhall, Cheadle Hulme and Heaton Moor account for a large share of the work, partly because of the number of premium cars kept there and partly because a private driveway is the ideal place for a mobile repair. There is room to walk round the panel, no passing traffic throwing dust at wet paint, and the car can sit still while the lacquer cures.

Town centre and Hazel Grove jobs are more often done at workplaces, where the vehicle is parked for the working day anyway. Either way the process is the same, and most single panel repairs take two to four hours from the technician arriving to the final polish. Anything spread across several panels, or needing a bumper off the car, goes to Radcliffe with free collection and delivery.

The damaged area is sanded back, rebuilt layer by layer, resprayed in a colour matched paint and then polished into the surrounding panel. The technician starts by washing and degreasing the area so nothing gets trapped under the new paint, then masks off everything around the repair to keep dust and overspray off the rest of the car.

The scratch itself is flatted back until the edges are no longer sharp, which is what stops the repair showing as a line later. Deeper damage is filled and built up in stages rather than in one thick coat. The area is then primed, and the basecoat is mixed to your vehicle's paint code and sprayed in thin passes so the colour builds evenly.

Lacquer goes on last, and the panel is finally machine polished and buffed so the new clear coat sits flush with the old and reflects light the same way. Done correctly you should not be able to find the repair by eye or by running a hand over the panel.

Stockport is 14 miles from Radcliffe, about 30 minutes, and covered across the full SK1 to SK8 range. The concentration of premium cars around Bramhall, Cheadle Hulme and Heaton Moor means a lot of the paint work here involves dark metallics and pearls that have to be blended rather than patched.

We work throughout Stockport and the SK1, SK2, SK3, SK4 postcode areas, typically 30 minutes from the body shop at Radcliffe, M26 4AD. That includes Stockport town centre, Cheadle, Bramhall and Hazel Grove.