I'll start off by saying that I am a pizza delivery guy. On Monday, I took a routine delivery to one of our regulars. Now I know exactly where they live because they've ordered for years, so I hurried on over to the house.

Needless to say, maybe I got their a little too quick...

As I pull up, the customers dog came up on me & the Fit pretty quick, and jumped up on my window sill to see who I was. I tried to say some standard commands to get the dog to jump off, but when he did, he left some nasty marks on my door and window rubber, & some of which went down into the paint...

Im going to meet with the guy today so he can have a look, but he said something about buffing it himself (Which i understand is a nice gesture, but i dont think hes a body guy) I also got a couple estimates, the most reasonable of which was $241.

Sucks, ive only made one payment on her and shes already got some battle scars. Ive never had something like this happen, and thought I would share!

 

Did the scratches go down to metal? Does your fingernail catch over the scratch when you move across it? If not, it is highly possible to polish it out. Any good detailer can get rid of it or even do it yourself. If the guy knows what he's doing maybe let him try but I don't trust anyone to work on my car and would rather do it myself.

 

Update:

Just got back from meeting with the guy. He buffed and polished all the surface scratches out and it looks pretty good. However, when he went to polish the scratches that were going through the pinstripe he ended up rubbing some of the pinstripe paint off... (Its really really thin paint, and I had no idea it was painted on. Damn)

Its not too bad though, he gave me a few numbers, and also asked me to get a couple quotes for touching up the pinstripe.

Makes me feel a lot better about the whole situation.

 

Sounds like the guy is pretty nice and trying to make it right. Too bad his dog was so excited to see you - where is the Dog Whisperer Cesar Milan when you need him!!! Hope you get it fixed as good as new

Cat :x

 

talk to your insurance. have your manager (at the pizza place) pay for the damage done to your private car. they should have
some sort of insurance coverage for its employees.

 

You're almost there, the final step is to continue buffing until the entire pinstripe is removed from the vehicle. But that's just my preference.

 

I thought all pinstripe are stickered on? Remember though buffing it out only covers up the imperfection it will need to be touched up.

 

You know Flyin172s, im actually considering taking the whole thing off but Im still not sure.

I mean if I touch up the pinstripe with paint, and down the road some other part of the pinstripe gets rubbed off, I probably would want to just buff the whole thing off again, and then have trouble getting the part I touched up off.

Has anyone buffed their pin striping off?

 

those pin stripes are tapes, no? try peeling off one of the ends
very carefully with a razor. it should just peel right off.

 

ouch, that hurts. i feel your pain, i deliver pizza also, and have had many instances where my car either got broken into, or scratched in the last 4 years. i'm kinda iffy about using my new fit for work...but i can't do anything about it.

I even put all the food in the back now with the fit..i dont want that "pizza bag" smell all over the fabric...and wanna keep the new car smell as long as possible. you know what smell i'm talking about...the "pizza bag smell".

on a brighter note, a professional pin striper should be able to touch up the spots the guys rubbed off with very little effort...

 

Like kenchan said, most pin stripes are stickers that end in the door jams. If you can follow the pin stripes to the door jams, it should be pretty easy to remove them from there.

 

Every vehicle I ever owned that came with pin stripes were just stickers that started peeling after owning the vehicle for a few years. They normally would just peel right off once I started picking at them.

Cat :x