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So what do you do when a co-worker's 11 year old Corvette suffers front end damage in a minor collision and the existing paint protection film (ie, clear bra) is going to be replaced? You prep that immaculately maintained ride properly before the new PPF is applied!
The car was but a few months old when the original PPF was applied, and when the nose cone was damaged recently and had to be replaced and painted, the PPF on that part needed to be replaced. So it seemed like a good idea to replace the old film on the hood and fenders at the same time as those areas were looking, um.....old. But since the new film was going to fully cover the hood and fenders, rather than just the front half like the 11 year old stuff, some prep was in order to ensure perfect paint under the new film.
Here's a 50/50 shot that shows how this 11 year old PPF has aged: the top portion is unexposed paint, the lower portion has that 11 year old film on it. Notice the lack of clarity in the reflection of the overhead fluorescent lights. The new film is claimed to give a much clearer, less textured appearance, plus it will be applied to the entire hood and fenders instead of this front-half-only setup.
A quick inspection of the previously unprotected areas of the hood and fenders showed some minor swirling. Nothing horrible, and on this bright yellow paint you needed some serious light to see them, but they were indeed present and, well, that's just not acceptable around here!
So, just a "partial" detail then, right? Well, that's what I thought, until I took a look at the repainted nose and noticed all the sanding marks in it! Seriously?
So the plan of attack was this: I was going to polish out the exposed areas while the PPF guy stripped off the film, and then I'd inspect those newly exposed areas for any defects and correct as needed. Of course I was going to have to deal with those sanding marks, too. Ideally, the same process that addressed the swirl marks would dispatch with the sanding marks as well. And since the C6 Corvettes are notorious for having crazy, insanely hard paint, I figured some M100 on a microfiber cutting disc with the MT300 would be a good first step. The real hope here was this combo would strike a good balance and be able to remove the swirls from the factory paint (mild defects on what was suspected - though not yet proven - to be hard paint) and the sanding marks from the fresh paint (an unknown quantity as far as hardness goes). A quick test spot on the factory paint showed that M100/DMC5/MT300 combo was more than up to the task. One section pass was all that was needed to obliterate the swirls, and just a second pass to rid the paint of any RIDS (see what I did there?
). Great! How about the nose section and the sanding marks? Two section passes and gone! Piece of cake! Well, except for the poor PPF guy, who struggled with aged, brittle film and some residue sticking issues.
These are the only big chunks of material to come off the paint - most of it broke apart as he struggled to remove it.
That combo of M100/DMC5/MT300 (at 5800 opm, by the way) made all of the paint - previously covered, previously exposed, and new on the nose - look like this:
And once the new film was applied, the finished product looked like the image below. The color shift is due to the angle of the hood being changed from one image to the next (above the hood was closed so a lot of ambient outside light was coming onto it, below the hood was open and facing toward the garage wall so no ambient daylight was hitting it). But look at the clarity of the reflections between the two - it's virtually unchanged. Remember, the shot above is freshly polished paint with no PPF over it, and the shot below has the new PPF applied. Look back to that first 50/50 pick and you can clearly tell the massive improvement from the old film to the new.
For all you Corvette fans, here's the entire car along with Norbert, the PPF installer, fighting to get the old film off.
It's really important to prep the paint fully before having PPF applied. While very light swirls on a light colored car might not show up under the film, we've seen black cars with PPF on the front half of the hood just loaded with swirls. On one occasion, I actually turned down a detail job on a Superformance GT40 because the horribly swirled black paint was visible under the PPF and I told the customer that if I polished the rest of the car it would look like a permanent 50/50 shot. I recommended he have the film stripped off, then I'd polish the whole car, and he could then have new film applied. He didn't particularly care for that suggestion. Fortunately for this Corvette, the proper process and prep was done.
Let's go back to those earlier comments about C6 Corvette paint being notoriously hard; this car was yet another example of anecdotal information found on the Interwebs being just that - anecdotal. The Oxford Dictionary defines anecdotal as "(Of an account) not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research" and that's almost always what we get when someone posts online that "the paint on (insert make/model) is crazy hard/super soft/etc". That person is relating their experience on a specific car, not on every single car of that particular make and model. So, while it could very well be that some C6 Corvettes have insanely hard paint, this one sure didn't. Those swirls came out with ease. A few years ago we had another C6 Corvette in our training garage with a bad bird dropping etch mark on it. That was a piece of cake to correct, too. So that's two for two. But that's still anecdotal, even though it seems to refute other claims about extreme hardness with C6 paint.
The moral of the story? Do a test spot!!! Reports of paint hardness or softness on the internet may be a rough guide, but unless you're working on the exact same car as the author of those statements, you can't just expect the paint to behave a certain way on every example of that make/model.
The car was but a few months old when the original PPF was applied, and when the nose cone was damaged recently and had to be replaced and painted, the PPF on that part needed to be replaced. So it seemed like a good idea to replace the old film on the hood and fenders at the same time as those areas were looking, um.....old. But since the new film was going to fully cover the hood and fenders, rather than just the front half like the 11 year old stuff, some prep was in order to ensure perfect paint under the new film.
Here's a 50/50 shot that shows how this 11 year old PPF has aged: the top portion is unexposed paint, the lower portion has that 11 year old film on it. Notice the lack of clarity in the reflection of the overhead fluorescent lights. The new film is claimed to give a much clearer, less textured appearance, plus it will be applied to the entire hood and fenders instead of this front-half-only setup.
A quick inspection of the previously unprotected areas of the hood and fenders showed some minor swirling. Nothing horrible, and on this bright yellow paint you needed some serious light to see them, but they were indeed present and, well, that's just not acceptable around here!
So, just a "partial" detail then, right? Well, that's what I thought, until I took a look at the repainted nose and noticed all the sanding marks in it! Seriously?
So the plan of attack was this: I was going to polish out the exposed areas while the PPF guy stripped off the film, and then I'd inspect those newly exposed areas for any defects and correct as needed. Of course I was going to have to deal with those sanding marks, too. Ideally, the same process that addressed the swirl marks would dispatch with the sanding marks as well. And since the C6 Corvettes are notorious for having crazy, insanely hard paint, I figured some M100 on a microfiber cutting disc with the MT300 would be a good first step. The real hope here was this combo would strike a good balance and be able to remove the swirls from the factory paint (mild defects on what was suspected - though not yet proven - to be hard paint) and the sanding marks from the fresh paint (an unknown quantity as far as hardness goes). A quick test spot on the factory paint showed that M100/DMC5/MT300 combo was more than up to the task. One section pass was all that was needed to obliterate the swirls, and just a second pass to rid the paint of any RIDS (see what I did there?
). Great! How about the nose section and the sanding marks? Two section passes and gone! Piece of cake! Well, except for the poor PPF guy, who struggled with aged, brittle film and some residue sticking issues. These are the only big chunks of material to come off the paint - most of it broke apart as he struggled to remove it.
That combo of M100/DMC5/MT300 (at 5800 opm, by the way) made all of the paint - previously covered, previously exposed, and new on the nose - look like this:
And once the new film was applied, the finished product looked like the image below. The color shift is due to the angle of the hood being changed from one image to the next (above the hood was closed so a lot of ambient outside light was coming onto it, below the hood was open and facing toward the garage wall so no ambient daylight was hitting it). But look at the clarity of the reflections between the two - it's virtually unchanged. Remember, the shot above is freshly polished paint with no PPF over it, and the shot below has the new PPF applied. Look back to that first 50/50 pick and you can clearly tell the massive improvement from the old film to the new.
For all you Corvette fans, here's the entire car along with Norbert, the PPF installer, fighting to get the old film off.
It's really important to prep the paint fully before having PPF applied. While very light swirls on a light colored car might not show up under the film, we've seen black cars with PPF on the front half of the hood just loaded with swirls. On one occasion, I actually turned down a detail job on a Superformance GT40 because the horribly swirled black paint was visible under the PPF and I told the customer that if I polished the rest of the car it would look like a permanent 50/50 shot. I recommended he have the film stripped off, then I'd polish the whole car, and he could then have new film applied. He didn't particularly care for that suggestion. Fortunately for this Corvette, the proper process and prep was done.
Let's go back to those earlier comments about C6 Corvette paint being notoriously hard; this car was yet another example of anecdotal information found on the Interwebs being just that - anecdotal. The Oxford Dictionary defines anecdotal as "(Of an account) not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research" and that's almost always what we get when someone posts online that "the paint on (insert make/model) is crazy hard/super soft/etc". That person is relating their experience on a specific car, not on every single car of that particular make and model. So, while it could very well be that some C6 Corvettes have insanely hard paint, this one sure didn't. Those swirls came out with ease. A few years ago we had another C6 Corvette in our training garage with a bad bird dropping etch mark on it. That was a piece of cake to correct, too. So that's two for two. But that's still anecdotal, even though it seems to refute other claims about extreme hardness with C6 paint.
The moral of the story? Do a test spot!!! Reports of paint hardness or softness on the internet may be a rough guide, but unless you're working on the exact same car as the author of those statements, you can't just expect the paint to behave a certain way on every example of that make/model.
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