Need advice on fresh paint

[Firescooby]

We painted a fire apparatus Saturday afternoon for a vollie department I train. It was by no means a pro job, but the old paint was bad, and we had limited funds.

Today the imperfections are evident (looks like it was sprayed unevenly). It looks much better than it was, but still pretty rough. We are planning on "spiffin" it up tomorrow evening. My high speed buffer broke on me, so all I have is my PC 7424.

What should we do? Wet sand? Compound?

I have 3M fine and medium cut compound and some polishing compound. The officer doesn't want to wet sand because he's afraid it'll be messed up even more.

Some advice is desperately needed. I don't have any pics...sorry.

[Mike Phillips]

Hi Firescooby,

If you don't have a rotary buffer, then don't wet-sand. The PC does not offer an aggressive enough polishing action to remove most sanding marks.

If you think it needs to be wet-sanded then you need to do it right away before the paint becomes too hard. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to buff out your sanding marks.

Mike