Removing desert pin stripes?

Anyone have any good methods or techniques to remove desert pin stripes? Picked up a few the last time wheeling. Some of the lighter ones I'm not too worried about, but there are a few deeper ones. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Rule of thumb is if you can catch the scratch with your fingernail you cannot buff them out. You’d have to remove too much paint and all your clearcoat for clear coated colors.

You will have to use a machine to buff trail scratches. By hand is not an option for paint correction.

I have a Porter Cable Orbital that I like. Its a good entry level machine. If you get crazy about detailing you’ll want to upgrade to a much more powerful one.
Griots also makes a good entry level Orbital as well.

Go check out the detailing section for good reccomendations and advice.

 

I recently picked up the Griot's 6 inch random orbital to address the very severe pin-striping on my wife's MGM 4Runner. I started their synthetic clay bar, then used the Complete Compound, then the Complete Polish, and finally the Poly Wax. I was able to completely remove the light scratches/holograms and minimize the deeper scratches. It was a lot of money and took around 4 hours but I almost completely reversed the damage (sorry, no pictures)

 

Use serious caution with cutting compounds. They are for heavily oxidated or scratched paint. You can buff through a clear coat with them by machine.

You definitely want to limit your use of them to maybe once in the lifetime of a vehicle.

 

I agree that you have to be careful with compounds. This will be less dangerous if you're careful and do your homework. I used the 6 inch pad at a medium speed. A smaller or more aggressive material are easier to cause damage. A 6 inch pad is near idiot proof. The Griot's Complete Compound has diminishing abrasives further reducing risks. All bets are off if you go down to the 2 or 3 inch pads or use their BOSS line of polishes.

 

While size of a pad is important (as larger is less corrective) its more about type of pad.
I can blow a hole in your clear with a 6” wool pad and a compound.

Many people on this site (and the vast majority inexperienced) will continuously recommend cutting compounds. Nothing wrong with using them when needed but when used by someone inexperienced can cause paint damage. And 99/100 they are not necessary.
I wouldn’t use one by machine without a paint gauge. Just me.
I’ve used cutting compounds to restore headlights. They do a fair bit of correction.

Always go least abraisive method first and get more aggressive if necessary.

Also, having the speed reduced on the polisher doesn’t mean less correction. It can mean more direct correction... which means it can be more abraisive if your slowing your passes.
Sometimes faster with faster passes is best when testing how much correction a panel requires.

Your clear coat is thinner than a post it note.

 

Thanks for all the info. What is your guys thoughts on using touch up paint?

 

I've never had much luck with the paint pen or brush type. I used the drcolorchip products in the past with limited success. It's a loosing battle with rock chips here in Arizona