Orange peel removal on black? PPG base/clear

T

tksmr2

New member
Ok, I bought this car.. It was repainted in Nov. of 06. The previous owner wetsanded and buffed the car.. but seemed to have really slacked on doing the doors and quarter panels and a few other smaller spots.



PPG BLack with clear coats.





I need to have this looked at.. I'm a bit worried that it might not come out as it looks pretty crappy in some spots.. very annoying. But, other spots the paint looks perfect to nearly perfect. Most of the perfect spots are the entire top of the car.. Fenders look good, hood, front bumper, rear bumper, entire top of the car pretty much looks nearly perfect.



Here are some pics of the problem areas. I will try to get better pics later:



door:



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Inner C pillar (the worst spots on the car)



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Nasty spots in my door jam areas



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Door



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I know.. not good pics to really assess the peel on the doors.. but it's there and it's spotty..



Any advice would be helpful.. I"m just thinking about going to a bodyshop and have an estimate made up for wetsanding the problem areas b/c I really can't live with it this way.





Thanks!

Todd
 
IMHO, unless you know the bodyshop worker, it could just cause you more trouble if they swirl and hologram your paint after wetsanding.



There have been a few threads on the forums where some guys have done some amazing wetsanding using a few weekends and some pretty standard detailing equipment.



What could be valuable to you is a paint thickness gauge so you know that it is safe to proceed. That looks like a Toyota MR2, so I would venture the car is at least 10 years old by now? Do you know who did the repaint? (Hopefully not Maaco)



If it is safe for you to wetsand, I think you can make this a fun weekend project since you don't have to wetsand the entire car at once. You can work on 1 panel per weekend so that you are making sure to do the work right and you'll have sufficient time and energy to properly polish the paint after sanding.



Just my .02
 
Nice MR2. Being a fellow MR2 owner, I would love to see how it would turn out.



A paint gauge would be a sure way of knowing how much room you have to work with. But if it were me, just take all the time you need and dont rush through it.
 
truzoom said:
IMHO, unless you know the bodyshop worker, it could just cause you more trouble if they swirl and hologram your paint after wetsanding.



There have been a few threads on the forums where some guys have done some amazing wetsanding using a few weekends and some pretty standard detailing equipment.



What could be valuable to you is a paint thickness gauge so you know that it is safe to proceed. That looks like a Toyota MR2, so I would venture the car is at least 10 years old by now? Do you know who did the repaint? (Hopefully not Maaco)



If it is safe for you to wetsand, I think you can make this a fun weekend project since you don't have to wetsand the entire car at once. You can work on 1 panel per weekend so that you are making sure to do the work right and you'll have sufficient time and energy to properly polish the paint after sanding.



Just my .02
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yes.. it's a 93 MR2 Turbo.. The paint job was done by a body shop in South Central PA near the MD border/Red Lion PA.. Emenheisers. It was not a cheap paint job.. but I do think the previous owner got ripped ~$2,800. The shop apparantly can do good work though. If i can get the sides of the car to the point were the top is I'd be extremely happy b/c there is NO orange peel on the top of the car except in those C-pillar areas and on the wing underneath. They just didn't do any finishing work on it and the previous owner agreed to do too much on his part and didn't finish the work either. Plus it looks like they put the wing back on.. and then sprayed the clear.. so there is no clear coat in spots under the wing when I pulled off the side portions of the wing to check.



In fact.. I'll have to look up the paint they said they used. PPG is the brand. I know.. but I have a code somewhere.



04-05-2007post5.jpg




mr2otm3a.jpg




thanks!
 
mr.ikon said:
Nice MR2. Being a fellow MR2 owner, I would love to see how it would turn out.



A paint gauge would be a sure way of knowing how much room you have to work with. But if it were me, just take all the time you need and dont rush through it.
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Thanks.. Yes.. I will need to get a gauge if I'm going to do this myself.
 
Man, you've got a beautiful MR2. I cant stress it enough. But does the orange peel really bother you that much? I wish you were local, I would definitely give you a hand.
 
mr.ikon said:
Man, you've got a beautiful MR2. I cant stress it enough. But does the orange peel really bother you that much? I wish you were local, I would definitely give you a hand.
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Yes.. it does bother me.. In fact. .when I got the car it had a lot of wax residue in the cracks everywhere.. However, that same wax residue hid some of the imperfections in the paint job.. They missed painting at the bottom of my door handle on one side were the masking must have been slightly covering the area since the door handles were not removed when painted. However, some good touchup and you would never no b/c it's such a thin line.



There is orange.. uneven orange on the doors especially. What makes me optimistic about getting it all out is that the fenders in front are really nice.. no orange there. And, the entire top of the car is nice.. But, looking down the sides of the car on a nice day is when it doesn't look so great b/c of the uneven orange peel.



I'll try and get more detailed pictures if I get around to it this weekend. It's hard with a $200 digi cam to get pictures to show orange peel.





yes, I do wish I lived in CA.. or closer to nice weather.. But that will have to wait until I finish my MBA. Then, I'll be able to better promote myself for companies out of state.





Thanks!
 
Are you sure it's in the clear? It's tuff to tell in the pictures. IMO I would take it to a body shop and let them do it. I don,t know if you are going to try this type of repair yourself, but, If you do not have any experience, I wouldn't try it. If you do try it, I would get an old hood and practice on it. Good luck Joe
 
jtford95 said:
Are you sure it's in the clear? It's tuff to tell in the pictures. IMO I would take it to a body shop and let them do it. I don,t know if you are going to try this type of repair yourself, but, If you do not have any experience, I wouldn't try it. If you do try it, I would get an old hood and practice on it. Good luck Joe
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I'm not sure...



I know the pics are not the greatest..





How would one even be able to tell if this can be fixed or not? I mean.. is orange peel in the base coat? If so.. then I guess it would not be fixable w/o repainting the areas.





I'm probably not going to try it myself.. I'm too afraid to really screw it up. My brother says he has done it before. However, he has very little experience, I think. He wants me to go to a body shop to get a quote.. then if it's really high.. he said he will do it. He is experienced with a rotary too..



So, I"m gonig to try to take my car to the body shop up the street that has painted portions of my brothers car to see what they say. Well, that is if I can get the car washed and it's not raining/snowing on Saturday morning.
 
You answered your own question. Yes the base coat can have bad orange peel and if the painter doesn't catch it, you come up with a crappy looking job. Maybe that is why some spots look good and the rest don't. Still it's hard to tell with just a picture.

Even if you let the body shop correct the paint and you and your brother finish it out, it is cheaper than if they do the whole thing. Keep us posted. Joe
 
Yeah man, that C pillar is horrible. Do you have a PC or a rotary?? I'd give the C pillar a go. Get a good wet sanding pad/block, some 2000 grit and go at it. That's how I learned to do it.
 
jshillin said:
Yeah man, that C pillar is horrible. Do you have a PC or a rotary?? I'd give the C pillar a go. Get a good wet sanding pad/block, some 2000 grit and go at it. That's how I learned to do it.
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Yeah, but I think that's the inside of the C-pillar...unlikely you will get a machine in there...which I'm pretty sure is the reason it wasn't done.
 
jtford95 said:
You answered your own question. Yes the base coat can have bad orange peel and if the painter doesn't catch it, you come up with a crappy looking job. Maybe that is why some spots look good and the rest don't. Still it's hard to tell with just a picture.

Even if you let the body shop correct the paint and you and your brother finish it out, it is cheaper than if they do the whole thing. Keep us posted. Joe
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thanks.. yea.. it's possible.. but doubtful as you can ascutually almost feel some of the peel sitting on top fo the paint..



Recap.. Car was repainted base coat clear coat on Nov. 06. Previous owner didnt' know much about having a car painted. So, I'm sure the body shop took advantage of him when he said he would remove some of the parts off the car and put them back on.. Apparantly there must have been a ton of orange peel on it b/c the previous owner said he spent 30+ hours wetsanding and buffing.



However, he said he got sick of doing it and was satisfied with the way it looked. But, that C-pillar is definetly not what I would call satisfactory!! I'll post his wetsanding method here shortly.



So, I'm sure what is left he just got lazy and said forget it.. I would imagine the sides of the car would be harder b/c you have to kneel down if you dont' have a little stool to work from .. that is probably why he didn't do that great of a job in those areas.



I know .. I have to get much better pictures.. I will try to do that.. My car is in the garage now it's snowing lightly.. I'm going to try to wash it this weekend, either in my garage or outside if it's dry since it's dusty.



Thanks!
 
jshillin said:
Yeah man, that C pillar is horrible. Do you have a PC or a rotary?? I'd give the C pillar a go. Get a good wet sanding pad/block, some 2000 grit and go at it. That's how I learned to do it.
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haha..yea... it's the worst part on the car for sure.. I don't have a PC or a rotary.. my brother has a milwaukee buffer 1750rpm.. However, I plan on getting a UDM here soon to just be able to polish out fine micro marring and make my cars look a lot better. I was going to buy a UDM until I researched and saw the Flex.. but I don't know if I'm even going to need that since my brother has a rotary for the harder stuff.



However, I want something that is mine to use all the time..



Thanks!
 
This is the process the previous owner used to wetsand/buff the car:





"wetsand 1500 grit, then followed by 2000 grit. After that used Meguires Mirror glaze products, first the Diamond Cut 2.0 cutting compound to remove the 2000 grit scratches. Used that with a maroon Meguires cut pad. Then moved to the Cleaner/Polisher, which was a medium cut, used that with a tan colored Meguires fine cut pad. Then moved finally to the swirl free polish, which is a light cut compound, used on a soft pad. Followed all of this up with two coats of Griots Garage, show car wax and after about 30 hours of labor on this thing you see what we have here!!! It was a hell of alot of work, but def. well worth it. "





It has 3 base coats of PPG black and 2 coats of clear



9700 Black with PPG urethane clear.





But, as I said earlier. he didn't finish the job. He wasn't as particular as me..
 
I'd wetsand it flat, and by that time you would probably have to have it re-cleared. That's some pretty serious orange peel and a lot of clear would have to be removed to make it flat.
 
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