{"id":57641,"date":"2026-10-24T02:45:05","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T00:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/accidents\/car-scratch-heres-how-to-tell-if-you-can-fix-it-yourself\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T02:45:05","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T00:45:05","slug":"car-scratch-heres-how-to-tell-if-you-can-fix-it-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/accidents\/car-scratch-heres-how-to-tell-if-you-can-fix-it-yourself\/","title":{"rendered":"Car scratch? Here&#039;s how to tell if you can fix it yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It only takes a second. A shopping trolley brushes against your car, you misjudge a tight parking space, or someone opens their door a little too enthusiastically. And just like that, there&#039;s a scratch that definitely wasn&#039;t there this morning.<\/p>\n<p>The question is, can you sort it out yourself, or is your wallet about to take a knock?<\/p>\n<p>According to Keagan Sloman, Head of Product and Commercial at The Unlimited, the first step is figuring out what you&#039;re actually dealing with.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Not all scratches are created equal, and not every mark that looks like a scratch actually is one. Sometimes it&rsquo;s paint transferred from another object rather than damage to your car&rsquo;s own paintwork. Other times it&rsquo;s little more than a surface mark. And then there are scratches that cut right through the clear coat. The trick is knowing the difference before you try to fix anything,&rdquo; says Sloman.<\/p>\n<p>The fingernail test<\/p>\n<p>Your car&#039;s paintwork has several layers, including&#8230;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arrivealive.co.za\/news.aspx?s=1&#038;i=78945&#038;page=car-scratch-here-s-how-to-tell-if-you-can-fix-it-yourself\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on Arrive Alive <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It only takes a second. A shopping trolley brushes against your car, you misjudge a tight parking space, or someone opens their door a little too enthusiastically. And just like that, there&#039;s a scratch that definitely wasn&#039;t there this morning. The question is, can you sort it out yourself, or is your wallet about to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57642,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.arrivealive.co.za\/ckfinder\/userfiles\/images\/Images1.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2149],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-accidents"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.arrivealive.co.za\/ckfinder\/userfiles\/images\/Images1.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}