Jim Morrison, the lead from very successful American music band “The Doors” shares the wisdom of the road in the line- “There’s a killer on the road, his brain is squirming like a tod” in one of his songs. Monday morning. 8 AM - you are driving down the way for work. You reach one of those unmanned red light stops, you suddenly push the brake paddle and the motorcycle rider next to you zip around like a ninja leaving behind a sharp screeching noise and a scratch on your car fender. You know what they usually say about Monday mornings? They are tough! Call it a blessing, but you have a chance to get rid of this scratch without really spending a penny. You can use toothpaste to remove car scratches. Yes, the same toothpaste you use every day to brush your teeth.
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How to use toothpaste to remove car scratches?
Imagine toothpaste as a lighter, softer form of sandpaper. When you gently rub toothpaste onto a slick and smooth surface, it sticks together on any imperfections that exist and softly sands them away, wearing off the uneven surface structure and polishing the surface clean.
The process to use toothpaste to remove car scratches:
- Start with thoroughly cleaning your car. The idea is to remove all the dust and dirt particles from the car body. This will help in protecting the car paint from any further scratches when you rub the toothpaste and will also prevent dust particles to fill the gap between the scratch. Tip - Avoid using a water hose or pipes for cleaning your car. We have started experiencing acute water shortages across the globe, use of water pipes increases the amount of water you will use to clean your vehicle. The best choice would be to use one bucket of water and a soft microfiber cloth to clean the car, this will prevent the wastage of gallons of water.
- Once the car is shining clean, step two would be to take a dry soft cloth and put some toothpaste on it. Tip - Never put the toothpaste directly on the car body, this could make the situation worse. Take the paste on the soft cloth and then apply it on the car body.
- Next step is to rub the paste on the scratch affected area of your car body in a slow circular motion. Make sure to reach every cut and corner of the scratch and gently try to fill every gap with the paste. Tip - Make sure to remove the toothpaste from the car body before it dries-off with a soft cloth once the scratches are removed.
Limitations of using toothpaste to remove car scratches
It's a blessing to have a DIY process which can help you remove the scratches from your car. But buffing out car scratches with any old toothpaste will only make the situation even worse. It is always recommended to use ‘whitening’ toothpaste to remove scratches from your car. ‘Whitening’ toothpaste works best because it contains small, barely perceptible abrasives. All the toothpaste have an abrasive quality in them. Abrasivity in dentistry is expressed by an RDA number, which ranges from about 4 to over 200. Most whitening toothpaste contains high RDA’s and contains a high amount of large particle abrasives like silica, calcium carbonate. If you want to use a toothpaste as a scratch remover, either use a toothpaste which has low RDA count or you can achieve low RDA by putting less toothpaste on the scratch. When the particle is small, then the toothpaste works more as a polish than an abrasive. Polishing fills in the gaps which make the surface better reflect light or shine. Similar kind of abrasives is also found in car polish. As you gently rub the toothpaste against your car, the abrasive action removes tiny layers of film and clear coat, removing those ugly marks and leaving a glistening mirror shine. It should also be noted that toothpaste can’t be used as a scratch remover if the scratches on your car are deeper or wider than your fingernail tip or if the paint layer on your car is damaged. However, we are pretty sure that the fact that you can use a toothpaste to remove car scratches must have surprised you a fair bit.
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