Soft or hard paint?

[tgfhatch]

I've been reading a lot about people discussing the paint being soft, being hard, etc.

Well how do you determine if your paint is soft or hard? Will this affect what type of products to use, how much pressure to apply etc.

Just looking for some advice.

[Murr1525]

Well, there isnt really a scale. It is just experience, if your car's paint swirls easily, or removes defects easily.

On soft paint, you will of course want to be as delicate as possible when washing, etc to not add extra swirls. But, soft paint is also easier to remove swirls from, so even if a car looks heavily swirled, #80 may fix everything. It also may respond to finer polishing, like from #82, or #7, etc.

If you get really hard paint, #80 might not touch anything. But experience with the car will tell you if you should jump right to #83.

Certain makes of cars may tend to have soft or hard paint, but different colors can be soft or hard as well. So the only thing to do is work on the specific car and see how it turns out.

[tgfhatch]

Thanks Murr. Go STEELERS this weekend!

[Mike Phillips]

Somewhere this topic recently came up and in a nutshell, here's what I posted,

"You don't know whether your paint is soft or hard until you go out into your garage and bring your hand down on the paint and being to work on it."

[Buellwinkle]

If you wash your car being as careful as possible and still get massive swirls you have a car with soft paint. My 2002 MB with soft paint swirled more with each wash no matter how careful I was, two bucket method, grit guard, etc.. My 2004 with the ceramic clear is very hard. I can let the car wash or dealer have at it, wash it without worry and after 18 months it's has very minor swirls. You can tell when it's polishing time, the soft paint will clean up with a mild product like #80 and have zero impact on a hard paint. Some paints are so hard (and I'm guessing my 2004 is although it hasn't needed buffing yet), that you may need to use a rotary to remove defects.