Might have a customer coming up...

[Cole Ziegler]

Ive got a potential BMW customer coming up thats interested in removing his orange peel, and while Ive had experience removing OP on SS paints, i havent experimented on BC/CC yet. So im going to work on the F150 later this week hopefully and see if i can find an approach that works for me, but other than the fact that SS has more paint to sand, what are the main differences? Thanks!

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Might have a customer coming up...

You may want to think twice about experimenting just once before attempting this on a customer's vehicle. As a matter of fact, you may want to think twice before even considering this at all:

Taken from http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36721

While it is true that the only way to truly remove orange peel is to wet sand, you need to be extremely careful when doing so on a factory paint job. Quite frankly the practice is not recommended, especially for the novice.

Factory clear coat is only about 2 mils thick - that is 2/1000 of an inch - could be a bit more, could be a bit less. But you don't know for sure. And the clear coat contains the UV screeners that protect the color coat. And that is where the problem lies: as the clear coat dries most of the UV screeners rise to the top of the clear, so removing even a relatively small amount of clear will remove a large amount of the UV screeners. This will lead to premature clear coat failure if you remove too much, and removing too much is pretty easy to do.

A lot of people will tell you that it's fairly difficult to sand all the way through your clear even with 2000 grit sand paper - but what they often fail to realize is that you do not need to go all the way through to run into problems. If you look at the service manual of virtually any major auto manufacturer, they will tell you flat out that removing more than 0.5 mil will create a situation where a complete refinish is in order. You can remove 0.5 mil with repeated, aggressive rotary buffing alone.

Unless you have a good paint thickness gauge and you have a lot of skill wet sanding and rotary buffing, don't even think about wet sanding a factory paint job on a vehicle you care about. Why rotary buffing skill? Because in most cases that's what is needed to pull out the sanding marks. But even using a D/A with a cutting pad and something like M105 Ultra Cut Compound, if you can pull out the sanding marks, you're still going deeper into the paint.

Wet sanding has its place, and there's no doubt that it's a lot of fun - as is rotary buffing. But unless you seriously know what you're doing, leave it to a seasoned pro.

Keep in mind all of the above is specific to original factory paint jobs. A body shop repaint often has the luxury of not only having more clear laid down to start with, but the painter can measure the film build before and after the clear is shot, so he knows exactly how much extra clear he has to play with it. You just don't have that luxury with a factory paint job.

[Cole Ziegler]

Re: Might have a customer coming up...

I know, ive read all those threads, but at the same time, one can never learn if he doesnt experiment, and itll be at least a month away so I plan on trying it out on our cars. What are the advantages of unigrit vs store bought?

[cnfowler]

Re: Might have a customer coming up...

I hope you get in a lot of practice before the trusting customer drops off their BMW. I can assure you, whatever money you end up making won't touch what a repaint will cost if you mess something up. Good luck if you're dead set on tackling this.

Colin

[Cole Ziegler]

Re: Might have a customer coming up...

weve got 5 cars lying around here, Ill get in practice I was just mainly looking for some pointers or advice

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Might have a customer coming up...

What are the advantages of unigrit vs store bought?

All sand papers achieve their stated grit by averaging the finest and coarsest abrasive particles found on the paper. Meguiar's Unigrit Sanding and Finishing Papers have a very tight tolerance from finest to coarsest so they greatly reduce the possibility of tracers being created in the paint. Tracers are the individual cuts made by the coarsest particles on a paper and will remain in the finish after you've buffed out the majority of the sanding marks. So if you're using a 2000 grit paper with a wide variance between fine and coarse particles, you'll be stuck with having to remove much deeper cut lines. Meguiar's Unigrit papers dramatically reduce the incidence of these tracers due to the far more uniform particle size. How clean you keep your work area and the paper itself will also play a role in the formation of tracers - if you start to build up a debris spot on the paper you may well end up with a series of very deep tracers, so it's important to use plenty of water and return to a bucket of clean water regularly as well.

I hope you get in a lot of practice before the trusting customer drops off their BMW. I can assure you, whatever money you end up making won't touch what a repaint will cost if you mess something up. Good luck if you're dead set on tackling this.

Colin

We aren't trying to tell you that you should never wet sand, just that it needs to be approached with eyes wide open. Very wide open. And having a good paint thickness gauge on hand is very important. Remember, on a factory paint job you've only got 2 mils (2/1000 inch) of clear coat to begin with, and ALL auto makers recommend removing no more than 0.5 mil of clear for safety reasons. That's 1/2 of 1/1000 of an inch.

[Cole Ziegler]

Re: Might have a customer coming up...

Thanks for that info!