Scuff & Scratch Repairs in Trafford Park

Yes, and it is the sensible way to do it. Rather than pulling vans off the road one by one, we book a visit and work through the vehicles that are parked up, prioritising whatever is due back with a leasing company or looking worst. Each is quoted individually up front so there is a clear price per vehicle rather than a vague day rate.

All we need is a working space in the yard or car park with room around the damaged panels and no heavy dust blowing across. Curing lamps come with the unit, so drying does not depend on the weather being warm, though heavy rain still stops spraying. Anything too big for on site work, or a vehicle needing a bumper removed, is collected and taken to the Radcliffe body shop free of charge.

• Trafford Park industrial estate and M17
• Old Trafford and the surrounding M16 and M32 roads
• Urmston and M41
• The Trafford Centre car parks and access roads
• Yards and depots off the M60 junctions
• Multi vehicle fleet visits booked as one appointment

Long horizontal scrapes are the signature of a working van, usually at wheel arch or door handle height where the vehicle has been eased past a wall, a gate post or a bay marker. They are wide, shallow and gritty, taking off lacquer and colour over a broad band rather than cutting one deep line. That is straightforward SMART repair work: flat back, prime where the damage reaches primer, respray in colour matched paint and blend.

Rear corners are the other constant, from reversing to a loading dock. Plastic bumpers and van corner mouldings need a flexible primer, because paint sprayed onto plastic without it cracks the first cold morning the panel flexes. Company cars from the estate more often come in with car park damage and motorway chipping, which are quoted alongside the scratch if they are worth doing together.

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.

Trafford Park is 11 miles from the Radcliffe body shop, about 25 minutes, and most of the work here is fleet and commercial vehicles repaired in the yard during the working day. Multiple vehicles from the same site are normally booked into one visit.

We work throughout Trafford Park and the M17, M32, M41 postcode areas, typically 25 minutes from the body shop at Radcliffe, M26 4AD. That includes Trafford Park industrial estate, the Trafford Centre, Old Trafford and Urmston.