heisenberg
New member
My dad went on a cross country road trip recently and ended up hitting a deer on his motorcycle. He was thankfully fine but it was about $2500 in damage on his bike – I had him ask the body shop if he could keep the old parts and he gave me the tank to practice my sanding and other stuff on. I decided this would be a cool time to experiment on how easy it is to damage and correct paint, and how much paint you can expect to remove. If you have any questions or things you’d like to see done just let me know and I’ll try my best to document it. The only thing I didn’t do that I want to do is practice burning through the clear.
Here`s the paint after Griot`s Fast Correcting Cream and my Nano.
Some isolated defects that I left alone to test out some stuff.
Same defects(you can see the remainder of one to the right of the light) after M205 + a coarse cutting pad.
After
So here`s the tank after being polished and wiped down with Wolfgang Paint Prep. It is probably around 98% defect free. I left some scratches at the bottom that I would later wetsand out. It looks pretty nice... so let`s ruin that
Found this old microfiber of my dad`s. Dunno where it`s from or anything - it had a ton of crap trapped in it. I wiped the tank without any sort of quick detailer over and over again.
You can see the marring left behind by the towel. Here`s the vid link if you want to see it in HD -
Took a plastic razor to it afterwards.
Here`s what we were left with after a crappy microfiber and plastic razor.
Some paint readings of the area I just damaged. Unfortunately I don`t know how thick the clear is since my usual trick of measuring the door jambs and other areas then comparing them won`t work here. I did notice that the underside of the tank is only like 100 microns - if anyone is well versed in how motorcycles are painted please let me know.
After just 2 passes with Griot`s Fast Correcting Cream on my Nano, using a blue Rupes pad. The damage and defects are gone but the paint is a little hazy... how much paint did we remove?
Took off ~8 microns. That`s a 4% change in our clear from 2 passes of an aggressive compound. That might sound insigificant but it`s not - that`s just our clear. Your average post it note is 76 microns. Kind of scary, right?
I saved this tidbit of info from Todd Helme a long time ago:
"Generally the clear coat on your car is going to be about 2 mils or 50 microns in depth. On a daily driven car which is exposed to UV light you don`t want to remove more than 15-20% over the life of the car. So the maximum amount of paint you can polish away is roughly .4 mils or 10 microns. Luckily most swirl marks are less (far less) than .5 mils or 2 microns deep. So you should be able to fully remove swirl marks at least 5 times on most paint systems."
Another nearby measurement.
Paint temp before I turned on rotary mode on my Nano for fun
Got warm pretty fast! This was after like 4 slow passes on rotary setting. The machine is small and battery powered. Imagine how hot paint can get using a full size one...
And now we have holograms.
Cleared them up with 2 passes of CarPro Reflect.
Okay so here`s the area where the seat rubbed on the tank - I wanted to wetsand here and see what was what.
Paint readings before.
Wetsanded with 2k grit. I only did 3 passes on the Nano.
After
Took some Rupes Coarse Gel Compound to it. This stuff will remove 1500 grit marks(or so it says). It made quick work of the sanding marks after just 4 passes with my Nano and a blue Rupes pad.
Readings after compounding. This means that wetsanding that small area took us from~163 to around ~136. A change of around 16.5% and a loss of 27 microns of clear, which is pretty enormous. I did all of this in about 30-45 minutes. Hopefully this helps clear up how quick compounds and obviously sanding can remove clearcoat. It`s not something to play around with if your car has OEM paint and is a daily driver.
After repolishing everything.
I know most of you veteran guys around here know all this, I just wanted to put it out there in case anyone has never seen how quick paint can go, and I really enjoy doing little experiments like this. I think it helps me as a detailer.
Here`s the paint after Griot`s Fast Correcting Cream and my Nano.
Some isolated defects that I left alone to test out some stuff.
Same defects(you can see the remainder of one to the right of the light) after M205 + a coarse cutting pad.
After
So here`s the tank after being polished and wiped down with Wolfgang Paint Prep. It is probably around 98% defect free. I left some scratches at the bottom that I would later wetsand out. It looks pretty nice... so let`s ruin that
Found this old microfiber of my dad`s. Dunno where it`s from or anything - it had a ton of crap trapped in it. I wiped the tank without any sort of quick detailer over and over again.
You can see the marring left behind by the towel. Here`s the vid link if you want to see it in HD -
Took a plastic razor to it afterwards.
Here`s what we were left with after a crappy microfiber and plastic razor.
Some paint readings of the area I just damaged. Unfortunately I don`t know how thick the clear is since my usual trick of measuring the door jambs and other areas then comparing them won`t work here. I did notice that the underside of the tank is only like 100 microns - if anyone is well versed in how motorcycles are painted please let me know.
After just 2 passes with Griot`s Fast Correcting Cream on my Nano, using a blue Rupes pad. The damage and defects are gone but the paint is a little hazy... how much paint did we remove?
Took off ~8 microns. That`s a 4% change in our clear from 2 passes of an aggressive compound. That might sound insigificant but it`s not - that`s just our clear. Your average post it note is 76 microns. Kind of scary, right?
I saved this tidbit of info from Todd Helme a long time ago:
"Generally the clear coat on your car is going to be about 2 mils or 50 microns in depth. On a daily driven car which is exposed to UV light you don`t want to remove more than 15-20% over the life of the car. So the maximum amount of paint you can polish away is roughly .4 mils or 10 microns. Luckily most swirl marks are less (far less) than .5 mils or 2 microns deep. So you should be able to fully remove swirl marks at least 5 times on most paint systems."
Another nearby measurement.
Paint temp before I turned on rotary mode on my Nano for fun
Got warm pretty fast! This was after like 4 slow passes on rotary setting. The machine is small and battery powered. Imagine how hot paint can get using a full size one...
And now we have holograms.
Cleared them up with 2 passes of CarPro Reflect.
Okay so here`s the area where the seat rubbed on the tank - I wanted to wetsand here and see what was what.
Paint readings before.
Wetsanded with 2k grit. I only did 3 passes on the Nano.
After
Took some Rupes Coarse Gel Compound to it. This stuff will remove 1500 grit marks(or so it says). It made quick work of the sanding marks after just 4 passes with my Nano and a blue Rupes pad.
Readings after compounding. This means that wetsanding that small area took us from~163 to around ~136. A change of around 16.5% and a loss of 27 microns of clear, which is pretty enormous. I did all of this in about 30-45 minutes. Hopefully this helps clear up how quick compounds and obviously sanding can remove clearcoat. It`s not something to play around with if your car has OEM paint and is a daily driver.
After repolishing everything.
I know most of you veteran guys around here know all this, I just wanted to put it out there in case anyone has never seen how quick paint can go, and I really enjoy doing little experiments like this. I think it helps me as a detailer.
