I knew I shouldn't have tried it

ptaylor_9849 said:
I have made 3 passes with an orange pad using 106FF. I've never had such a hard time getting out surface imperfections as I have with this car. It's probably because of the extremely hard clear coat..
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IMO three passes isn't all that much work, it takes a lot more than that to correct a lot of flaws (I've done many more passes with a rotary/orange or yellow/H-T Extreme Cut on softer clear than that). Working by PC on hard clear I'd expect to do at least six or eight (or many more) passes wth the PC before you're ready to step down to a final polish.



Get some 4" pads, something more aggressive for the initial correction, and work in lighting that shows the true condition of the paint. Heh heh, if I can remove scratches from Audis with the PC (let alone by hand in inaccessible areas) then you oughta be able to do it on the 'vette, given enough time. FWIW, I could *never* do significant correction on hard paint with the PC until I got the 4" pads, probably because I wouldn't spend several hours per panel that can be required (that's no exaggeration, it can literally take hours).



I suggest you take SuperBuick up on his offer, you'll see what it takes to do this stuff and then you'll be far better prepared for next time (besides having it looking good now).
 
Accumulator, thank you for your good advice and not making me feel bad about this incident. Maybe I just don't understand how many times I can go over an area without causing damage. I'm just affraid that I will thin the clearcoat and cause more damage than I'm trying to fix. I just figured that if I made several passes without much success than I am doing something wrong and should move on to the next aggressive thing. But maybe the answer is to keep going over an area numerous times. But here's the question. Is it possible to go too far and if so, will I discover that point when it's too late? I'll send a PM to superbuick to see where he lives in MA.



Patrick
 
ptaylor_9849 said:
Accumulator, thank you for your good advice and not making me feel bad about this incident. Maybe I just don't understand how many times I can go over an area without causing damage. I'm just affraid that I will thin the clearcoat and cause more damage than I'm trying to fix. I just figured that if I made several passes without much success than I am doing something wrong and should move on to the next aggressive thing. But maybe the answer is to keep going over an area numerous times. But here's the question. Is it possible to go too far and if so, will I discover that point when it's too late? I'll send a PM to superbuick to see where he lives in MA.



Patrick
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Accumulator has shown us a PC can damage clear, however with an orange pad and IP it is going to take many, many, many passes on a Corvette. I'd take SuperBuick up on his offer, if I had to guess I would say he will have it visibly reduced in a very short amount of time.
 
picus is right, I messed up the clear on my MPV with the PC, so I'm speaking from the viewpoint of somebody who *does* take potential damage into consideration.



The clear on your 'vette (assuming it's remotely similar to the clear on the '99 C5 that I had), is both much thicker, and *MUCH* harder than the clear on my MPV. And I'm quite certain that you'll be more gentle than I was being when I caused the damage. Plus, I was working on an area where the existing damage (that prompted the work) was so severe that I know it would need painted anyhow and I was being quite aggressive with a 4" pad and a fairly aggressive product (and lots of pressure). Still, it's not like I'm in the "can't hurt clearcoat with PC" camp; I *know*, first-hand, that *that* isn't true. So...



Note how your efforts to date haven't solved the problem- this indicates that you're *not* taking off (too) much clear; you're not taking off *enough* of it to solve the problem. A lot of people have found the 'vette clear hard to work, it's not just you.



But you're using a mild product and a mild approach in an attempt to solve a tough problem. That's not a recipe for speedy resolution of your problem.



And again, on thick, hard clear, you can do a *lot* of work without thinning it too much. Leaving the big scratch out of it for now, the milder marring is a good test case. I'm *absolutely* confident that you can remove that marring (the stuff that doesn't look too bad depending on how you look at it) without taking off too much clear. SO I'd suggest that you work on *that*. Polish a section with the light marring over and over and over, inspecting after every pass (don't work past the point where you fix things ;) ). You should eventually solve the minor-marring problem and you'll learn just how much work it takes (IMO it'll be a lot).



If you get to have SuperBuick work on it, I bet you'll be :eek: about how aggressive he has to get. You just need to learn your way around this new-to-you clear so you gain the confidence to work on it enough to gain the requisite experience. Heh heh, that's the Catch-22, you gotta do the work to gain the experience that you wish you had in the first place ;)



One thing, you *do* need to get a feel for how long to work your polish...go for the point where it's *almost* dry but not quite. Don't quit too soon and don't keep going until it dries out all the way. Either error could cause micromarring and confuse the issue.
 
like so..



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Also - this is GM Corvette clear coat we're talking about here. If you say something bad about the paint when the car is within a few hundred yards, it will swirl up just to get back at you. Then it takes massive effort to get it 90% of the way back to where it was before ;) Don't worry about it too much. The absolute WORST case scenario as I can see it right now is that the larger scratch was a bad touch-up job that just exposed itself when you polished. In that case we get it touched up by a reputable shop, and we still polish out all those swirls properly :)



GM black paint on firberglass CAN be made to look great as others have shown. Here's my little slice of bragging (2001 firehawk hood)
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