Compared to previous vehicles I have owned, my new Honda Accord Coupe had moderate orange peel in the clear coat that was reducing the reflectivity of the beautiful sapphire blue metallic paint. I went to Anthony wanting to eliminate or reduce significantly this pesky "feature" of modern automobile painting technology.
Unbeknownst to me before hand, Ron Harris, a friend of Anthony's showed up to help. After washing and drying, work began by doing a reflectivity depth study. This entails placing a ruler against the OP'ed regions of the vehicle and seeing how much of the ruler reflection can be
read. Some parts of the paint showed somewhere between 4 and 5 inches, a sign there was lots or room for improvement. Anthony took some before pictures, but had some camera problems, only discovered after-the-fact. so none are available.
I brought with me some Mirka Abralon 2000 and 4000 sanding disks for evaluation [by the expert] and this was used dry using a 6" random orbit electric sander. It comes with foam backing that is very soft and a backing pad that is somewhat firmer. Initially it was used at low speed but the combination proved ineffective as the softness of the padding
allowed it to conform to the hills and valleys in the OP. Turning up the sander speed helped a bit but didn't seem to be knocking down the OP appreciably. Perhaps used wet with an air powered random orbit sander might demonstrate increased effectiveness, but that will be another story for another day. This was set-aside for a while.
Ron then started wet sanding a panel at a time using Meguiar's Unigrit 2000 and 3000 grit sandpapers. About half way through, he encouraged me to start, so I completed the remainder of the vehicle, while he ran off to run some honey-do errands. From time to time, the Mirka (4000) was used to see what would happen. It did eliminate some of the
3000 sanding marks and left the paint quite smooth to touch but not very shiny.
Meanwhile, Anthony was following us around the vehicle with his trusty Metabo rotary, erasing the sanding marks, using Menzerna Powergloss and Hi-Temps Xtreme Cut in combination with LC orange pad. I'm sure his product combination was contributing to some OP reduction as well. Final polishing was accomplished with a Cyclo, finishing pads and Menzerna's FP and as darkness was falling, I chased the Cyclo work, applying Klasse AIO. One last gentle power wash with de-ionized water got rid on any buffing residues in the crevices, nooks and crannies.
On a final note, the option to complete eliminate the OP was NOT elected on Anthony's advice in favor of leaving some [greatly reduced] to provide some lasting UV protection. It is now at the point where I can live with. I now have learned enough about the wet sanding process I feel confident enough to tackle any areas I find "offensive" on this or other vehicles.
Thanks Anthony and Ron - I really appreciate your freely sharing your combined experience with a relative newcomer to detailing.
Pictures here:
Before - Note fuzziness of the vertical edges of mail box
After - Fuzziness reduced
After - Some OP remains as evidenced by fuzzy tree reflections
After - Almost gone - note branch reflections in glas and paint are virtually the same
Unbeknownst to me before hand, Ron Harris, a friend of Anthony's showed up to help. After washing and drying, work began by doing a reflectivity depth study. This entails placing a ruler against the OP'ed regions of the vehicle and seeing how much of the ruler reflection can be
read. Some parts of the paint showed somewhere between 4 and 5 inches, a sign there was lots or room for improvement. Anthony took some before pictures, but had some camera problems, only discovered after-the-fact. so none are available.
I brought with me some Mirka Abralon 2000 and 4000 sanding disks for evaluation [by the expert] and this was used dry using a 6" random orbit electric sander. It comes with foam backing that is very soft and a backing pad that is somewhat firmer. Initially it was used at low speed but the combination proved ineffective as the softness of the padding
allowed it to conform to the hills and valleys in the OP. Turning up the sander speed helped a bit but didn't seem to be knocking down the OP appreciably. Perhaps used wet with an air powered random orbit sander might demonstrate increased effectiveness, but that will be another story for another day. This was set-aside for a while.
Ron then started wet sanding a panel at a time using Meguiar's Unigrit 2000 and 3000 grit sandpapers. About half way through, he encouraged me to start, so I completed the remainder of the vehicle, while he ran off to run some honey-do errands. From time to time, the Mirka (4000) was used to see what would happen. It did eliminate some of the
3000 sanding marks and left the paint quite smooth to touch but not very shiny.
Meanwhile, Anthony was following us around the vehicle with his trusty Metabo rotary, erasing the sanding marks, using Menzerna Powergloss and Hi-Temps Xtreme Cut in combination with LC orange pad. I'm sure his product combination was contributing to some OP reduction as well. Final polishing was accomplished with a Cyclo, finishing pads and Menzerna's FP and as darkness was falling, I chased the Cyclo work, applying Klasse AIO. One last gentle power wash with de-ionized water got rid on any buffing residues in the crevices, nooks and crannies.
On a final note, the option to complete eliminate the OP was NOT elected on Anthony's advice in favor of leaving some [greatly reduced] to provide some lasting UV protection. It is now at the point where I can live with. I now have learned enough about the wet sanding process I feel confident enough to tackle any areas I find "offensive" on this or other vehicles.
Thanks Anthony and Ron - I really appreciate your freely sharing your combined experience with a relative newcomer to detailing.
Pictures here:
Before - Note fuzziness of the vertical edges of mail box
After - Fuzziness reduced
After - Some OP remains as evidenced by fuzzy tree reflections
After - Almost gone - note branch reflections in glas and paint are virtually the same
).
