Hello All

[RWE4Runner]

I just finished painting my truck and I am wondering if I should lightly wet sand to remove the grit or use a buffer to remove & bring to a nice shine.
I will then apply clear coat or continue painting to give a better depth.
Any ideas or suggestions?

[Jeff Burrows]

Re: Hello All

Welcome to MOL RWE4Runner, it is great to have you as a fellow member!

First off, I will do my best to help you, but your post raises a lot of questions and should probably be posted under the "how to" section of the forum.
Here are a few things that come to mind. What type of paint are you using? How thick is the base coat? Type of clear coat and thickness? Are you doing a repaint or are you starting fresh on a new panel or complete strip of an old panel?

In my personal experience I have done a full repaint on my own Jeep a few years ago and have painted various body panels on other vehicles in both waterborne and solvent based paints with urethane clear coats over the years. My knowledge is limited compared to some of the more advanced experts who do this for a living, but I will do my best to help you. If anyone else wants to chime in, that would be great and very helpful!

First, what are your trying to achieve? Are you now painting the base coat and you want to add layers of base coat before you clear coat? have you already clear coated and just want to level and polish? Wet sanding between paint coats from what I know is unnecessary and would take away a lot of the paint your are spraying on the surface. The only coat you could sand would be your last base coat layer and then your final clear coat layer. After your clear coat is applied then you would wet sand and polish that to level the texture. Basically remove your orange peel.

As far as "buffing" or compounding your clear coat surface, it will generally not remove the texture like a wet sand and follow up compound and polish does. Some soft clear coats respond better to compounding and polishing, but generally the flat look you desire can only be achieved through wet sanding to level the texture first.

As far as sanding I highly recommend the Meguiars unigrit sanding discs with machine if possible. They work very well and are much easier to remove, do to their uniformity in sanding.

Hopefully this will get you in the right direction and please let us know if you have any more questions. Thank you.