 Hey, welcome to Day in the Bay. This is a series where we work on some cool cars, talk to their owners, and share you detailing tips along the way. Today we're going to be talking about off-road scratches. Yes, those unfortunate mishaps with tree branches or bushes when you're out there on the trail or who knows what. What we do know is they're not good for your paint, so that's what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to talk through how these happen, how we can remove them. We're going to show you how you can remove these off-road scratches, and then maybe when you should not remove the scratches. Our Project Vehicle Day is this awesome Ford Bronco, it's owned by our buddy James. He's a local enthusiast and he uses his truck a lot off-road here in Southern California. Every weekend he's out there hitting up another spot. Recently, he picked up some of these off-road scratches, so we're going to check him out and help him remove these and share with you along the way how we can do that. Before we rinse the entire truck, we're going to focus on the wheels and tires first. Get those clean, the wheel wells. That way we don't have to worry about keeping the whole truck wet the whole time as we're working on the wheels. Take care of those first and then move to the rest of the truck. We got the truck pre-rinsed with a pressure washer. We're going to go ahead and use a foam gun to just add some extra lubricity during the wash process. We're still going to use a traditional two-bucket wash method. We got our soap mixed up over there. We're just going to add this in to add a little bit more extra lubricity. We got our gold-class mixed up and we're ready to pump. So I don't have to ask why a Bronco, because that's what you guys had when you first got married, but why a Bronco of this vintage and not like one of the really early old-school ones? Well, the reason we wanted a Bronco of this size is because, actually, if you take the back seat out, you could fit a full mattress in the back. And so we could camp in it. We take three yellow containers and all our camping fits inside that. We take it out. We sit up two chairs. We roll out our mattress and it's set up. We have an awning that comes out over the back. And we could drive as long as we want through the desert or the mountains. And when we get tired, we stop. We set up camp wherever we're at. Well, this one, the way I go about building an off-road truck to take my wife out, I want to make sure I could get back. Well, yeah. Right? So a lot of times, when you're younger and aggressive, you break your truck and your friends tell you back out. But I wanted to make sure that I made it reliable enough to get back. So first, I went through the entire drive train. We've replaced the motor, the transmission, rebuilt both axles, we've replaced all the electronics, the brains in the car. I mentioned before, it's a really good looking truck. Thank you. The color combination, it's muted. You've got that. And he said it was an opal. Yeah, Ford Opal. It's a factory color. My wife, very particular on the Bronco we bought. And she saw that one. She loved the color. So I went and negotiated and bought that one. It's not like a really classy, elegant look to it. Thank you. Thank you. But then you go and you get it. You don't just get it dirty. Dirty is fine. But you're like scraping it through the trees and the shrubbery while it's dirty. You're not supposed to touch a vehicle when it's dirty, right? Right, but that's what this was designed for. It's designed to scratch the heck out of the paint. It does. But you know, part of the therapy of going off-road is coming back home and cleaning the car and prepping it and getting the paint ready and going over every nut and bolt again. For me, that's part of the enjoying part. So you're driving. Talk to me about detailing because when you come back from this, Washington is easy. Yeah, that's easy. But what else you got going on here? So I spent typically five to eight hours, depending where I went off-roading on the truck once I get back. Do you worry about getting rid of every swirl mark in the paint and making it flawless? No. A lot of people accused me of that once I had it painted. So I went out and did a really rough trail right after the paint cured. I waited six weeks, and I took it out and showed people, like, you know what, this is going to be used tonight. I got out 95% of it. You know, and I think that's fair, and I think that's actually a smart way to go because you're going to go back out and damage the paint. Sounds terrible, but you're going because that's part of the enjoyment of the vehicle is getting it out there in the rough. And we get people who sometimes stress about making their paint perfect all the time. But those deeper marks, sometimes you have to look at them, and I'm thinking you take them almost as a mark of honor. Absolutely. I've loved seeing other rigs on the road that have trail scars. It looks great. That's the guy I actually use as a vehicle. I see enough really nice high dollar off-roading vehicles that don't have a scratch on them. And it kind of makes me sad because I think that owner is missing some of the great experiences that I've had. Have you ever taken a cruise show? Carve and coffees, you know. I'll show up to a car and coffee with the, you know, because I'm meeting some friends with their cars there. It's kind of funny. It actually gets pretty good attention because it's so foreign to what you usually see at a car's and coffee. I love parking it next to, you know, a Ferrari or something like that in it. And, you know, I can't even see the car when I can use it as a step to get out of my car, you know? But it's kind of fun. Yeah, let's go out and see what's going on. Absolutely. Look forward to it. Ultimate compound on a red foam cutting disc is working great to remove the scratches on this particular truck. If you're trying this at home and you need a more aggressive combination, a good next step up from what we're using here is our DA microfiber correction compound paired with our DA microfiber cutting disc. These two together, when used correctly, you can actually get rotary light cut, but still with the safety and ease of use of a DA machine. Well, I got to tell you, James, after working on this all day, I know I can't get over how cool the truck is. I mean, these things are just awesome. It was fun to work on. Scratches came out pretty well. The rest of the paint cleaned up pretty good. Did you learn a couple of things? You taught me a ton today. I've been working on cars for a long time, detailing cars. And you taught me a lot about different products to use, how to properly use a bumper after I've been using one forever. You taught me how to use it correctly, which is kind of a better thing. Forever, forever is a little bit wrong. So there you go. Hey, we hope you guys enjoyed that video. If you have any questions, make sure to shoot us a comment or even give us a call. And we'll see you on the next day in the base. So see you.