wet sanding/polishing clear coat to eliminate orange peel effect....

[squeek360]

.... looking for some advice on wet sanding the clear..... the car was painted last year. the car looks great in spite of the fact that the clear was just sprayed, and that's it, so it has a fair amount of orange peel effect that I'd like to lessen/eliminate.....

some questions I have are...

what is the best grit to work with?
is it necessary to power polish the car afterward?
or can one just get a good hand polish?
or for that matter, is polishing afterward even necessary at all?

thanx in advance

 

[4404spd]

First off how many coats of clear? I use a foam block and 3m 1500 wet & dry paper. For the first stage of buffing I use a wool pad with Presta ultra cutting creme. Then a white foam pad with the 3m white compound in the plastic bottle followed by a black foam pad with the swirl mark eliminator creme. If you want numbers I can get them for you. I wash the car in between steps because you want to have it clean so the next step can do its job without dragging the last step compound back over it. Pack a lunch because its gonna take probably over a day to do it all. But its worth it in the end:toothy8:

 

[805moparkid]

all given area's get 10 passes (or how ever many passes it takes to remove the visible orange peel doubled (1K only)) with 1K, 1500, and then 2K...

then buff...

 

[Dodge33]

.... looking for some advice on wet sanding the clear..... the car was painted last year. the car looks great in spite of the fact that the clear was just sprayed, and that's it, so it has a fair amount of orange peel effect that I'd like to lessen/eliminate.....

some questions I have are...

what is the best grit to work with?
is it necessary to power polish the car afterward?
or can one just get a good hand polish?
or for that matter, is polishing afterward even necessary at all?

thanx in advance

I would start off with 1000 grit, and wet sand the whole car, if your orange peel is that rough. you may get away with 1200 grit tho, I don't know. Then work up to the finer grit paper. If you want it to look as smooth as mirror finish, you could stop at 2000, 2500, or even 3000 grit, the choice is your's.
It's definately necessary to use a power buffer with the correct speed, I believe it's like 1750 RPM or so. You need to be careful on ANY sharp break off point's, because they are the vunerable burn tour CC off. Run a line of 3M
masking tape close to the edge, and you can buff right over top of the tape. Let the buffer do the work, do NOT force it onto the panel's, and don't let the buffing wheel run out of compound. Just start off slow, and only do one panel at a time, then move on to the next one. You"ll get the hang of it. We use the 3m perfect it compound, have not bought any for awhile, and they are alway's coming up with something new. We also use the Meguiar"s foam Pad's, The dark Maroon one is for compounding, and the tan is for polishing, then you can use Hand glaze after all that. There will be many different individual opinion's on this subject, so be prepared. Good luck, with your endeavor!!

 

[1968FormulaS340]

If you have not done this before, you are very likely to burn through or sand through the clear and ruin your paint job.

Another thing...... How much clear is important to know. Your clear is your UV protection, you cut that clear down below the minimum requirement and the paint job will fail and the car will need to be repainted.

 

[MileHighDart]

I'm right in the middle of doing this on my car. This was my first at home paint job, and I'm doing the wetsanding and polishing exactly the way my paint supply guy told me, and its comming out fantastic.

Start sanding (hand sanding) with wet 1000 grit using soapy water.. Sand till most of the orange peel is gone. When you squeegie the water off, if you still see little shiney spots then theres still orange peel, keep going till most of the spots are gone. Sand in one direction only (line front and back on a panel)

Then switch to 1500 grit, sand in the other direction (up and down), when you squeegie the water off and look at the surface all your sanding marks should be up and down. If you still see front to back marks, then keep sanding with the 1500 till all the 1000 grit marks are gone.

Then switch to 200 grit, and go back to sanding forward and back, till all the up and down 1500 grit scratches are gone.

I then used the Presta Ultra cutting creme with a power buffer. (yes you need a power buffer, buffing by hand just wont do it). Work in small areas at a time, and go up and down, then left and right each time. Wipe off the residue and check out the shine. Each area may need gone over a couple times to get a perfect shine. This was with a wool pad.

I then switched to the Presta Ultra Polish. with a yellow foam pad. Same procedure, work the pad both directions, wipe off the residue and check out the results.

Also my paint guy told me that the longer the clear sits the harder it will get. After a year, you clear will be a little harder to sand, and take a little more buffing, but I'm sure its still doable.
Good luck.
If you follow this procedure, you can get some really awesome results.
heres a couple pics of what I have done.
In one of these pics you can see that the side of the car is unsanded and still has the orange peel, and the top of the car has been colorsanded and buffed.

 

[mullinax95]

MileHighDart hit on the nail head.

I've seen painters use a guide coat of (get ready) charcoal dust smeared on with a sponge on the clear coat. It works and shows every low spot.

 

[Rocky_JS]

if this is your first shot at wet sanding I would not start with 1k grit instead use 1500 first then go to 2000. 1000 will cut fast and if your not used to wet sanding you could cut through easy.
Do a small out of the way flat level spot first to get the hang of how much you need to do to level the paint. if it is a urethane it may still have a slight wave to the paint even after your done,
use a pliable foam pad as no pads will leave finger marks and a firm one will leave edge marks. Do not wet sand where you do not want or can not get a buffer into. tape off edges and do a panel at a time cover the rest of the car as much as possible. this is a time consuming task to do it right and also expensive to have done.
a water blade is handy to have to wipe away slurry while sanding. keep a spray bottle of water handy. dirt and debris build up while sanding IS scratching the paint. check your work frequently better to do more since you can not go backwards.

clean all compounds from paint and gaps quickly it will harden like concrete in a day and become VERY hard to remove.

 

[squeek360]

I'd like to thank every one in this thread for all the great advice. I haven't had a chance to tackle this yet as I wound up in the hospital last year during the prime of summer time and the season passed me bye :banghead:

Any way, with spring fast approaching, I thought I'd bring the thread back to life. I'll likely tackle this project during the spring thaw when the weather is beautiful but the roads are to be feared lol.

Beyond my orange peeling, I also have a few random spots where some dirt/dust chunks got into the clearcoat. It was quite nice out this afternoon so I went out to the garage and attacked one of the worst spots with a razor blade, some 2000 grit, and emery that I had laying around.

Here's what it started out as


Here's how it ended up (circled is where the chunk of crud was)


Definitely a drastic improvement, and after doing this little test spot I'm feeling rather confident that I can take this project on. Thinking I'll go 1500/2000/then perhaps 3000 or emery and then go at it with the power tools. Thanx again for all the advice, I'll update the thread when I finally get at it in a month or 2