Getting rid of orange peel

W

whiteWRX

New member
Hi,

Just tried searching with not much luck. Looking for a way to get rid of orange peel without color-sanding.



Is this possible with a rotary?



What products would you suggest?
 
It's impossible to remove orange peel *properly* unless you sand it away. Grinding it down with a buffer/compound is a bad idea. It won't allow you to reduce it evenly and will create more damage than good. Also, on a factory appied finish, when you remove a decent level of OP, you'll most likely be destroying the clear's UV protection & weaken the durability/longenvity too.
 
Thanks for the reply. This is pretty much what I expected to hear.

I am just shocked at how many new cars come the factory with orange peel.
 
It's there partly because of new, environmentally better painting techniques, but mainly because customers accept it.
 
Sometimes I wonder if the way OEM's are spraying cars now (with that static charge application) is making the peel worse...the peel is why I try to buy vehicles with lots-o-flake to hide it :D
 
Metal flakes FTW!



Seriously though. If I were buying a new car and upon delivery pointed out the orange peel and stated it was unacceptable, what would be the odds of them actually fixing it?
 
Zilch likely, it would cost them almost as much as they made off your sale.



To the op; even if it wasn't in your name I would have guessed it was a subaru, I've got a black 07 and it's pretty bad.
 
pharmboyrx said:
Metal flakes FTW!



Seriously though. If I were buying a new car and upon delivery pointed out the orange peel and stated it was unacceptable, what would be the odds of them actually fixing it?
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Pretty close to zero....



And I wonder how many would want them to attempt to wet sand the entire car after a purchase.....?
 
I have orange peel on my car, but its a 15k Mazda3. If I bought a car over 30k, I'd be really PO'ed if I got a car with orange peel.
 
Well OP is supposidly on new cars to prolong the durability of the paint. Paint with OP on it is somehow more durable and will last longer compared to a flat layer, non OP paint ... I'm no painter so I don't know the truth to this but it has been stated several times here and there.
 
Budman, you're right in a round about way, there is a coating that looks like op that they put on the lower portion of some new vehicles that coating itself is more durable.
 
budman3 said:
Well OP is supposidly on new cars to prolong the durability of the paint. Paint with OP on it is somehow more durable and will last longer compared to a flat layer, non OP paint ... I'm no painter so I don't know the truth to this but it has been stated several times here and there.
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Don't see how there could be any truth to that... it's just wrinkling in the clear coat. There's no way that makes it stronger...
 
Seems like all our b/c cars have OP, and our most expensive ones (Audi A8 & S8) are pretty bad, despite the factory's fancy robotic paintguns. For that matter the RX-7 has awful OP too, and it's single-stage.



As the only way to fix it is to wetsand (no thinned clear thank you!) or reshoot (no way some cars like the Audis are gonna turn out as nice as factory, at least not overall), I don't see a fix in many cases :nixweiss If it's a car that *can* be disassembled for a proper repaint, then sure, spring for a nice $10K paintjob and you should end up without any OP; I just might do that on the M3 if I keep it.
 
Yeah, I find it interesting why alot of manufacturers use chipguard on the rocker panels of vehicles to make them more durable. Basically this is no more than heavy orange peel. Just another reason why I think orange peel is there for durability.
 
Accumulator; I was speaking with some of the Honda engineers in your home state about this and apparently the OEM automotive industry is suffering caniptions; the new ever changing enviro reqs are having a negative effect on paint across the board. I know several automakers/suppliers are investing heavily into research to solve the problem, but for now it looks like that's what we're left with.
 
Did any of the engineers mention anything about the finishes also being quite different on the foreign produced vehicles than the ones made here? That's one of the reasons (per VOC) why Honda still uses a single stage recipe for some colors at some of their overseas plants.
 
David Fermani said:
It's impossible to remove orange peel *properly* unless you sand it away. Grinding it down with a buffer/compound is a bad idea. It won't allow you to reduce it evenly and will create more damage than good. Also, on a factory appied finish, when you remove a decent level of OP, you'll most likely be destroying the clear's UV protection & weaken the durability/longenvity too.
Click to expand...



That's a decent rule of thumb, but I have removed peel from several factory paint systems in the last twelve years, and not one of them have shown ill effects from it, if done properly there's no question you can remove a large majority of it even on factory systems.



You will know within six months if you have jeopordized your clear cote. Funny thing I noticed on a complete after market Vette I sanded down only the vertical panels. The hood wasn't that bad, I didn't service it regularly but around a year later, the hood displayed crows feet, the vertical panels were perfectly fine...go figure.
 
Factory applied clearcoat is typically 1.5 mils thick. In a recent article Bud Abraham wrote in Professional Carwashing & Detailing, he explained that reducing the factory clear more than 1/2 mil (~12 microns) will disturb the CC's UV protection and could prematurely fade your base coat. There's alot of variable to determine how long it *could* take before any ill effects are visable such as base color and sun exposure.



Defelsko (makers of paint thickness guages) states on their website:

Because of the potential for removing the majority of the UV blockers, most auto manufacturers recommend that a maximum of 0.3 mils (8 microns) clear coat be removed as prevention from UV damage to underlying paint layers.



MakitaNinja Did you reduce the OP or completely remove it? The bad thing on Vettes is that even if you flatten one out or even do a really flat repaint, the faberglass will still be wavy. Even if you block the heck out of it, the fiberglass will eventually shrink/expand creating waves.
 
David Fermani said:
Did any of the engineers mention anything about the finishes also being quite different on the foreign produced vehicles than the ones made here? That's one of the reasons (per VOC) why Honda still uses a single stage recipe for some colors at some of their overseas plants.
Click to expand...



There was some mention of it, but I didn't really get into it ( I should have). They were responding to my complaints re Subarus paint quality on new models.
 
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