So, I got my truck LineXed over the rail and I am extremely pleased. The shop did a really good job, straight lines and little over spray, but....... Whatever tape ...

So, I got my truck LineXed over the rail and I am extremely pleased. The shop did a really good job, straight lines and little over spray, but.......
Whatever tape they used left a residue from h*** just below the liner on the rails on the side of the bed. Long story short I went through the sensible and safe ways of removing it without damaging the paint, had a few to many beers in the process, couldn't get it off, got really frustrated, and ended up rubbing it off with a scotch bright pad from under the sink. I know, I know, what was I thinking. Anyway I now am the proud owner of a Silverado with less than 3000 miles and a 1 inch line of scratch down the sides of the bed rails.

The scratches don't actually look that bad, more or less just like swirl marks on the heavier side, but I'm afraid I may have rubbed of the clear coat. I tried some turtle wax rubbing compound I had laying around from back whenever and it didn't even touch it. If the truck was a few years older I would just throw some dirt on it and call it a day but with it being so new I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions.
Thanks
Ill add a picture of what I'm dealing with when I get a chance.

Well, to save yourself some trouble, I'd use a random orbital machine (Porter Cable 7424) and some polish. I just went over my entire truck (2008...new to me) with Adam's polishes. Very straightforward process but time consuming as all hell. My results were good...some example:

Before:



After:




I tend to be a perfectionist when it comes to my vehicles so I'm pretty picky/paranoid. I don't know how all these scratches/swirls got on the truck in the first place...whether it was an automatic car wash or someone doing a horrible buffing job...but the Adam's products did their job with some time and effort (A LOT of time and effort). It might be kind of difficult to buff with a powered machine right up next to the sprayed on liner as it might tear the hell out of your pads if you aren't careful, SO, you might have to do that by hand...which will take more work but should still give you good results.

That turned out very nice. Will doing this do anything to the clear coat? When I got my truck from the dealer, who ever cleaned it must of had a dirty rag because it has straight line scratches over a lot of the truck. You really don't see them unless it is in bright sunlight. I did not notice it until several weeks later and they blamed it on the auto car wash. This spring I do want to have this taken care of though.

@JBartoletti WOW that looks great!

I really doubt you rubbed the clear coat off. I f you know someone that works for a body shop or know someone really good at the dealer they may take care of it for you. It shold not take them that long to make it look like new. Just a side note I would have taken it back to the LineX dealer and told them to take care of it or give one good discount. After all the best advertisment is by word of mouth. Just my 2 cents. Let us know what you did to fix it.

Red Green wrote:That turned out very nice. Will doing this do anything to the clear coat? When I got my truck from the dealer, who ever cleaned it must of had a dirty rag because it has straight line scratches over a lot of the truck. You really don't see them unless it is in bright sunlight. I did not notice it until several weeks later and they blamed it on the auto car wash. This spring I do want to have this taken care of though.

Well, in essence what you are doing is cutting down the clear coat to literally take the scratch/swirls out. You’re “evening” everything out. So, to answer your question, technically yes you ARE doing something to your clear coat. But at least it’s a permanent fix and not just “covering it up” like some other products work. It did turn out great, but it takes patience. Luckily for me, my truck isn’t my daily driver so I could just leave it setup in the garage and work on it when I had an opportunity.

I would rather have anyone who works on my vehicle (whether it be the dealer, Line-X dealer or whoever) just give it back to me dirty/not cleaned or waxed. It's a fact of life that someone else isn't going to take as good of care about your stuff as you would if you were working on your own vehicle...plain and simple. Some people don't care that much about stuff like that, but I do.