Mothers California Gold Scratch Remover

Readers of my blog know that I’m pretty meticulous about keeping my car clean; I don’t even want to guesstimate how many hours and dollars detailing my car, but at the same time I also take an enormous amount of pride in keeping a 6 year old car looking showroom-new…so when Mothers polish reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in collaborating on some content together as part of their #PristinePolish campaign, it was a no-brainer. I’ve been using Mothers products from before I could even drive and I’d wax and polish my Dad & Grandpa’s cars, and the bright red bottles have been in every garage and detailing toolkit I’ve had since. While I’ve tried and reviewed nearly every detailing brand in existence, I’ve always had great experiences with Mothers and was delighted to get a care package from them with some carnauba wax, spray detailer, microfiber rags, and their California Gold scratch remover.

While I plan to put all of these products to good use, I was most excited for the California Gold Scratch Remover…while my car is relatively scratch free, I couldn’t say the same thing about my wife’s car. Her trusty & reliable Ford Focus is our go-to vehicle for trips to the beach, road trips to Arizona, grocery shopping, and everything in-between…which means it’s parked in some pretty busy parking lots, and driven in areas where a few scratches are bound to happen. It’s been a while since I’ve polished her car, so these scratches have grown in size and frequency and it was well overdue to give her car even half the TLC mine gets!

For this project I used a buffer to hit these spots, but it can be applied by hand too. Start by washing your car, or at least the area you want to remove the scratch from, first. I used the Mothers Instant Detailer to clean the areas first, making sure there was no dirt or containments in the area I planned to buff first. Once everything was dry, I applied the Scratch Remover by taking a few pea sized drops and putting onto my buffer pad, then moving the buffer in slow 4-5 slow passes to work the area without ever holding the buffer in one spot too long and risk burning the paint. Once I’ve buffed in, I used a Mothers microfiber towel to wipe off any remaining residue and voila! The scratches were gone. I was nervous with the black metallic paint that the polishing compound might be too abrasive, but I didn’t find any swirls or marring as a result of using the Scratch remover, in fact, the paint in the area around the scratch also looked better than before.

It’s hard to photograph scratches on a black car due to the reflections, but I did my best to highlight the before & after in each shot. I did about 8 different spots in total, all of which were varying degrees of length, depth, and patterns of scratching. Unless the scratch was so deep that the paint was missing, the scratch pretty much disappeared. On top of that, the paint got a nice deep shine that made it look new again; because this is a true polish I then followed up by applying Mothers Carnauba wax to the area so that there was a layer of protection as the polish removed any previous wax or protection that had been laid down.

It’s probably most effective around door handles…it’s crazy how with almost any car, the area around the door handles gets most scratched up from keys, rings, key chains, clothing, and other things it comes in contact with. It hit up each door handle and they all went from looking pretty beat up and worn down to looking great, like above. If you plan to sell your car, this is a great trick to improve resale since the buyer will inevitably look at the door handles to open the car, and a bunch of scratches will signal that the car hasn’t been well maintained or has scratches all over.

As you can see in the above, not only is the scratch gone but the paint shines and reflects better, too. The red Mothers bottle on the right (before) is fuzzy and you can’t read any of the text, whereas in the after picture to the left it’s more clearly in focus and you can even see the texture of the ground…then do another pass with the Carnauba cleaner wax and the shine gets even better.

You can buy Mothers products pretty much anywhere automotive goods are sold. Check out more about Mothers on their website, and give them a shout-on social media using the hashtag #PristinePolish or #MothersPolish to showcase your detailing projects using Mothers products.