What could cause these vertical scratches on my car?

September 14, 2014 1:38 PM

I have a 2007 vehicle that has some minor body scratches. Today, I noticed many of these small, vertical, scratches running most of the length of my vehicle on the right side. Here are images of my vehicle (a bit hard to see)

I did take my car to a car wash yesterday that uses those soft cloth brushes like this:
http://www.badgerlandcarwashequipment.com/images/topBrush.jpg

I went back today to file a claim, and they told me that it isn't possible for the brushes to make this pattern. Their brushes rotate horizontally, so they said vertical scratches aren't possible. I can't think of anything other than a mechanical action that would create these types of small vertical scratches, so I am at a loss here.

posted by denverco to Travel & Transportation (9 answers total)

Response by poster: Here are the images:

http://imgur.com/a/IDBh9
posted by denverco at 1:38 PM on September 14, 2014

Unless I'm misjudging the height and location, they look like pretty standard door dingers to me. Maybe they are just suddenly more visible now that your car is clean?
posted by Think_Long at 1:55 PM on September 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

A similar set of vertical scratches on our car turned out to be from grooves on the mechanical garage door when we mistakenly parked with a small amount of the bumper within the garage door path. The door has an electric eye, but for some reason it grazed the car before reversing and going back up. The scratches were vertical and straight.
posted by third rail at 1:56 PM on September 14, 2014

My guess is that someone bumped it with a shopping trolley.
posted by pipeski at 2:23 PM on September 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Seconding door dingers.

However, if they're all the same height and they all showed up together at the same time (did they?), it looks like somebody gently T-boned you.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:25 PM on September 14, 2014

I disagree with the car wash that the brushes "couldn't" cause those scratches. If a hard object, vertically oriented, became embedded in the cloth, it would whack up against the door side and leave a vertical scratch or ding as the brushes rotate.

The spacing, height, and multiplicity of the scratches leads me to believe that it wasn't caused by repeated and random door-dinging (in a parking lot, e.g.) unless you are in an assigned (narrow) spot and have the same car parked next to you every day. (I have a friend who had this issue, and the car assigned to the spot next to her was the culprit, as identified by paint left behind.)

This looks like damage created by a mechanical device in repetitive motion.

The good news is, you should be able to reduce the appearance of those scratches through elbow grease and detailing products.

(And always best to handwash your car yourself -- those mechanical drive-thrus are hell on paint and wheels.)
posted by nacho fries at 3:22 PM on September 14, 2014

Has a dog or cat been jumping on your car? Could be claw marks.
posted by MultiFaceted at 10:44 PM on September 14, 2014

Imagine something like a shopping cart that rolls down a slope and taps into the side of your car at a grazing angle, leaving a vertical line. It then bounces off just a bit and taps again in a different place (new vertical line). Instead of a 1/2" tall horizontal scrape from something dragging along the side of your car, it bounces instead of dragging, leaving a series of little 1/2" tall lines. If you're really feeling like CSI, check and see if there's a ridge of paint. If it was vertical force, there would be a difference between the top end and the bottom end of the scratch; horizontal force, it would be a ridge along one edge more than along the other.
posted by aimedwander at 7:56 AM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Shopping cart.
posted by humboldt32 at 10:48 AM on September 15, 2014