Anything to remove rubbed-on paint?

[Whisper]

I had an attentional brain fart while parking last night, and got a bit too close to one of the support columns in my apartment's covered parking structure. Ended up brushing the front passenger side of my car against said column, and now I have a nice patch of rubbed-on white paint from the incident.

Do they make any sort of paint remover that would get rid of the rubbed on paint without stripping away my car's paint/clear coat underneath? I briefly tried cleaning some off with a spare towel I had lying in my trunk, and not surprisingly, was unsuccessful.

 

[marvdmartian]

I had some idiot, about 5 years ago, that thought it would be cool to use a can of spray paint and tag the side of my truck with a spot ~12" in diameter.

I didn't notice til at least a day later (don't usually do walk around inspections every day, ya know?? 😉 ), and wondered how I'd get the dried paint off my finish.

Buddy of mine used some solvent.....basically, just paint thinner.....to remove it. The thing is, your automotive finish isn't just dried onto the car, it's pretty much baked on. That's what makes it such a hard finish. The paint from the column is just rubbed on there, and should come off using a paint thinner solvent as well.

Hopefully you didn't damage the finish underneath when you rubbed the column. The only caveat to using paint thinner is, once you're done removing the foreign paint, wash the car, and rub on some new wax there, since the thinner will remove that as well (more than likely).

 

[Whisper]

Thanks for the info/advice. I actually ended up grabbing some Scratch-X, which did a pretty good job of removing most of the rubbed on paint. Sadly, there's a small-ish dent and some scratching, so until I get it by a body shop, this is probably as good as it'll get.

I'll keep the paint thinner bit in mind in case this happens again, though.