Brand New Car : Not so great paintwork

[KO78]

Hi, just mulling over some of the paintwork quality of brand new cars right off from the factory......

Only a handful have great paintwork which has more clear-coat dressings...looks glassy smooth, has still water mirror reflections (Lexus-type). These are easy to work on, just put on Sealant and Wax, basically a piece of cake to detail.

Most new cars, however, have more grainy paint surfaces. That is, from a 45 degree angle, you will see that the surface has wave like pattern. No matter how much you put sealant and wax, it will shine and look wet BUT never be glassy smooth.


Question : How can we work this factory paintwork to become glassy smooth? Can we use, for example, a rotary with a fine polish (Menzerna FP II) to flatten out the wave like surface?

My own experience is that after removing some swirlmarks on my brand new Mazda3 fenders with a rotary & polish, the fenders are looking much glassy smooth compared to my doors (which has AIO + SGx3 + S100x2). So I am thinking if I should just try work on the doors as well with rotary & polish.

 

[brwill2004]

It is my understanding that to get that glassy smooth finish, you have to wetsand the paint defects out and then buff out the sanding marks. I think that the poor quality paint jobs on newer cars, are a result of the manufacturer not spending enough time wet sanding and buffing the defects out of the paint. Painting is not just spraying on color and clear.

 

[kimwallace]

A rotary if used long enough with an abrasive enough product will remove the wave like surface, which is called orange peel (because it looks like the peel of an orange). However smoothing out the finish in this way will probably result in buffing through the clear coat and maybe even the base coat. So a better alternitive is to wet sand with at least 2000 grit or finer paper and then buff to remove the wetsanding marks and achieve the gloss.
Factory clear coat is very hard and it is sometimes difficult to remove all of the wetsanding marks, so you should be very experienced using a rotary buffer. Even then, you will have problems with some paints.
Here is the sad part ...
Once you have achieved a perfect paint finish, you will now see every defect in the body panels that are on the car.
The one advantage to orange peel is that it hides many of the minor imperfections in the paint and that is one reason many cars and trucks have the type of paint finish that they do.
I wetsanded and buffed my 95 Trams -Am to an almost perfect finish and you would not believe all of the panel defects that are now evident.

 

[Clean Dean]

Good finishes...

I detailed a 1999 Vanden Plas last month that had virtually no orange peel. What a pleasure !!! Unfortunately when we often detail Toyota Camrys and Ford Trucks it can be depressing.

Most customers will not pay to have their daily driver sanded.