show room finish vs. show car finish

[noswirler]

Mr. Mike Phillips?
I work for a lot that sales imports (low milage) thing is thevye all been painted somewhere you know a panel here a panel there. I do this every day,so my question ? do you need 1500 or 2000 to get the show room finish,or what do you think? I noticed a lot of the newer models come from the factory with alot of orange peel especially porches. I do alot of show cars too, but these guys I got want no orange peel at all which is fine with me. but these new ones with all the peel its hard to get the blends even ( yeah yeah gauge, I use the optical version)
thanks , Ive really learned alot from this forum keep up the good work

[Mike Phillips]

Re: show room finish vs. show car finish

Mr. Mike Phillips?
I work for a lot that sales imports (low mileage) thing is thevye all been painted somewhere you know a panel here a panel there. I do this every day,

so my question ? do you need 1500 or 2000 to get the show room finish,or what do you think?

Whenever you're working on a used car, 2 things,

1) You don't really know what you're working on, that is how much clear is on the surface because you don't know whose gone before you and what they used on the car. A thickness gage can give you an idea, but because it measures total film build and not working film build, you just never know.

2) Sanding factory baked finishes, or repaints that are already cured is hard and dangerous, even if you're really good at what you do, it's still no cake walk, especially if/when the people you're working for have unreal expectations and are not educated in the paint polishing process enough to know/understand what you're dealing with.

Now take the above two factors and add in what they're paying you to do the work and a suggestion is to put into practice the philosophy of,

"Taking a car to it's maximum potential"

Without sanding the paint.

Taking a car's paint to it's maximum potential is doing everything you can do to produce the best results but with the constraints of using common sense and financial sense. For most of these cars, if you use a rotary buffer and some type of compound or cleaner/polish you're going to remove a majority of the easy to remove and safe to remove defects while dramatically increasing all of the other features like gloss, smoothness, clarity, reflectivity, etc. And from 5 feet away the paint will look like a show car finish. If you're customers want perfection, taking into consideration the above factors, what they want is unreal unless they're willing to pay top dollar, allow you the necessary time to do the job, and not hold you liable if a mistake is made.

Mr. Mike Phillips?
I noticed a lot of the newer models come from the factory with alot of orange peel especially porches. I do alot of show cars too, but these guys I got want no orange peel at all which is fine with me. but these new ones with all the peel its hard to get the blends even ( yeah yeah gage, I use the optical version)
thanks , Ive really learned alot from this forum keep up the good work

Same answer as above. The problem with wet-sanding factory finishes is the paint is fully set-up and usually hard, at least hard enough to make it more difficult to remove your sanding marks versus if you had been at the shop where the car was painted and could sand and buff the next day.

The factory finish is likely more on the thin side, not the thick side which means you have less room for error. Two negatives, hard paint and thin paint.

If they want flawless finishes with no orange peel whatsoever, then they need to move you to where the cars are being painted and have you work with the painters to dial in a system that enables you to remove the orange peel they're laying onto the car and thus showcase their work.

It's not the painter that makes a show car finish, it's the guy who does all the sanding and buffing that makes or breaks a truly great paint job. The painter gets all the credit and the guy doing all the hard dirty work gets tired and dirty.

Due credit should go where credit is due.

Not sure what else to tell you except always evaluate the customer first, there are some people you don't want to work for and can never make happy. If it's a do or die situation because you need to eat and pay the bills, then you'll need to educate your customer and explain to them what can and what cannot be done in the real world. If your honesty doesn't convince them, then you've done all you can and it's time to stand down and let another person try to please them.

[noswirler]

Re: show room finish vs. show car finish

most of these cars come from the auction so who painted them who knows. thats not the problem Ive never had a prob taking out sanding mark (i use meguiars toilet paper i.e. 3000),im well paid and as well as you know it takes as long as it takes. but this factory orange peel? Thats why I like show-car its easy just take it all the way.

[Mike Phillips]

Re: show room finish vs. show car finish

most of these cars come from the auction so who painted them who knows. thats not the problem Ive never had a prob taking out sanding mark (i use meguiars toilet paper i.e. 3000),im well paid and as well as you know it takes as long as it takes. but this factory orange peel? Thats why I like show-car its easy just take it all the way.

As long as you have a system that works for you consistently and you're being rewarded for your hard work then go for it!