Over Correction... mind boggling

D

Danspeed1

New member
Here is my predicament. I am not completely against wet sanding although I feel it should be a absolute last resort. Same with heavy compounding (M105-3M Extreme Cut). I tend to like to clay first and start with a white or orange LC pad and a mild polish and work my way up. Lately I have been raising the bar on my work and I have been taking in side jobs for extra cash. I have also flip cars from time to time and honestly, I know its a very poor attitude to have but I rather collect my $$ and let the next owner worry about paint thickness. I absolutely hates people who are always looking to repaint a dull finish or dump a car because it "doesn't look nice." Those are the cars I buy and resell :D .



Problems begin with the customers wanting more and more. I know what most of you guys are going to say... tell them its not possible... tell them the harm it does to heavy compound... but the problem is they will just go down the road to the local shop where the guys change oil while there detailing your car. And I do like to test my skills.



Lately I have been getting one bad acid etched car after another. This is a real problem. Every car has ridiculous acid etching. Last car I did was so bad after wet sanding and polishing with 3M extreme cut I still couldn't knock it down. Hood look good in direct sunlight but anywhere else it was still covered in bad etching. I feel like I am not delivering what these people expect but at the same time I am having a hard time swallowing the fact that I am really knocking down the clear coat. Whats particularly upsetting was I recently did a car that had rock hard clear on the hood, and soft paint towards the rear. My first time burning the clear, and you know what... I still couldn't get the freaking acid etching to go away.



What are your thoughts?



Give the customer what they want or provide a mediocre finish and save the clear?



Whats really amazing is the cars keeping getting worse and worse. Its like people wash them with brake fluid.



DG
 
I've been thinking the same thing lately. I see a lot of these pro details running through Autopia, and there is no doubt that these vehicles look FLAWLESS, but you have to wonder just how many times can a car really be polished with m105 and a cutting pad? Even using a DA you are still taking the paint down. Paint on a car is what, like .005" thick? Some of these scratches we're working out can practically be felt with a finger nail! Once has to wonder, if you get a customer who abuses their car, and they come back to you once a year for a full paint correction and sealing, are you going to run out of CC in four years? Even if it's not a return customer, it's like playing Russian Roulette. One of those years, you're going to be the guy they come to, you're going to be the guy who goes to far, and you're going to be the guy who has to deal with it.



Vehicles should have punch cards in the glove box that show you just how many times the paint has been refinished!
 
True



all very true



And its funny too because a lot of the pros I look up to; seems like they are the first ones to tear into every car with M105.



Its a real problem because if you tell the customer "NO," or, "it looks great why mess with it," they either A. Go somewhere else and have some hack work on it, or B. tell you to do it anyway. Then when it all goes wrong your left to blame.



I recently went though this with my girlfriend. Car looks great... but has a scratch. So I M105 on a spot pad BUT I just take the sharp edges off the scratch so its kind of blends into the paint. She turns and tells me "I can still see it, keep going." I say "no" from 1 foot away you can't see it. I told her no one should be this close to her car that they could see the scratch and explain that if I keep going I am reducing the amount of clear on the car which will cause problems for US later down the road. But these customers are a PITA.



And I have seen some really nice cars with some serious neglect. I am so busy I really have NO time for my own cars... typical case of plumber that can't fix his own sink. But my cars never get like this, and I have never seen such horrible damage to paint. This last car looked good till I started polishing it, that's the sad part. Pinholes all over and acid etching I could catch my finger on... no joke... what do you guys do in this situation,... clearly i made the wrong judgment call.



DG
 
Danspeed1 said:
True



from 1 foot away you can't see it. I told her no one should be this close to her car that they could see the scratch.



DG
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wow you guys both have good points. Danspeed . . . . . i tell people that all the time. In certain situations they will tell me well from a distance it looks great but if you really get up close to the vehicle you can see this or that . . . . and my response in a jokingly way is usually if people can point that stuff out they are just to close to your vehicle LoL.



I have seen some of the very well reputable detailers on here and other forums post pics with crystal clear paint that looks like someone was throwing darts at it because it has a ton of tiny pin holes all over it.



I at times hate the fact that i can't get stuff out and it really makes me upset at times because i like things to be well perfect but at the risk of blowing through the clear it simply is not worth it.



A way i would personally approach this situation would be to tell the customer:



i removed a majority of the defects but some are just a little out of safe reach. I can continue to try and remove more of the defects if you would like for me to go that route but i highly would not recommend it and will assume no liability if something major happens due to over polishing/compounding.



Give them a warning and give them a option. If you insist you push forward have them sign some sort of waiver that states you will not be held liable and they have been warned that it was very dangerous to go forward.



I have never had a case where someone has told me you have to do this or i insist that you get every single thing out.



How is the flipping car business? I need to get in to that. Business has been slow i'm looking for what ever i can to make ends meet.
 
I agree with both of you. I often peruse the Pro Before/After forum, and it is safe to say, a lot of those cars are PERFECT! Perfect in the sense that they have taken a Makita rotary with a wool pad and 105, and worn the surface of the vehicle down to the bottom of the deepest defect.



That's all well and good.. I'm just worried about them going back next year, or coming to me! I can't afford an ultrasonic paint thickness gauge, when I get a badly swirled, brushed, and webbed car I assume I'm working with factory paint, it's only begun to occur to me lately that maybe, just maybe, I'm not the only person to have ever laid pad to paint on this particular vehicle...
 
jono20 said:
I agree with both of you. I often peruse the Pro Before/After forum, and it is safe to say, a lot of those cars are PERFECT! Perfect in the sense that they have taken a Makita rotary with a wool pad and 105, and worn the surface of the vehicle down to the bottom of the deepest defect.



That's all well and good.. I'm just worried about them going back next year, or coming to me! I can't afford an ultrasonic paint thickness gauge, when I get a badly swirled, brushed, and webbed car I assume I'm working with factory paint, it's only begun to occur to me lately that maybe, just maybe, I'm not the only person to have ever laid pad to paint on this particular vehicle...
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well . . . . . i don't do enough corrective work to get a PTG. Not a lot of folks want to spend the $$ around here for that type of work.



What i don't see a lot of on the forums is regular grunt work details. The down and dirty ones. I mean from time to time folks put that up but most stuff that is uploaded is all corrective stuff.



I am not a painter but i have been in the modifying car world ever since i could drive. I have had cars painted and been around painters and so on . . . . . so i have a pretty good eye for a vehicle that was in a accident of some sort. A lot of times owners are surprised when i ask them:



has your vehicle ever been in a accident or repainted? They usually all answer no and then when i show them all the sanding scratches they scratch their head like how did those get there or like i busted them. :chuckle:



if you ever are in question about any particular panel step down a pad or two and on the polish as well. The last thing you want is to go through the clear and instead of you making $300 or what ever you might charge you owe them $1,000 for the paint work that now needs to be done LoL.
 
Would you say it's always the detailer's fault if the car has been corrected SO much that it simply runs out of paint? What about the ten guys before him? Makes you think that the owners need to be educated a bit on whats actually going on once they drop off the ride.
 
jono20 said:
Would you say it's always the detailer's fault if the car has been corrected SO much that it simply runs out of paint? What about the ten guys before him? Makes you think that the owners need to be educated a bit on whats actually going on once they drop off the ride.
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well at the time yes because you are assuming liability when working on the vehicle.



It's like dropping a glass and it cracks and knowing that it cracked you put it back up on the shelf and when someone else touches it the glass breaks. Well they didn't know it was already cracked so to everyone that person broke it.



Catch my drift. So the owners don't know that their paint might be thin so when you come along and start polishing and blast through the clear they look at you like what the hell did you do to my car but in reality it was the series of events that lead up to that day from the previous hacks that caused that to happen.



Educating the customers is important but i feel sometimes people just down right don't give a crap.
 
jono20 said:
I agree with both of you. I often peruse the Pro Before/After forum, and it is safe to say, a lot of those cars are PERFECT! Perfect in the sense that they have taken a Makita rotary with a wool pad and 105, and worn the surface of the vehicle down to the bottom of the deepest defect.



That's all well and good.. I'm just worried about them going back next year, or coming to me! I can't afford an ultrasonic paint thickness gauge, when I get a badly swirled, brushed, and webbed car I assume I'm working with factory paint, it's only begun to occur to me lately that maybe, just maybe, I'm not the only person to have ever laid pad to paint on this particular vehicle...
Click to expand...





Highline II is $225.00(however I just replaced my Highline with a DeFelsko from Phil @DD)if you do not invest in a paint depth gage it is like driving at night with your lights off........ you can do it but..... .



Without the proper tools of the trade serious correction is something that should not be done as it will be a "when" not "if" situation of strike thru. In my write ups you hardly ever see me with pics of all the readings, but rest assured in the estimate step I take readings all over the car and if I get 85 microns or less I pass and have done so recently.



Here is saying that has been around a LONGtime, "Smart people learn from thier mistakes.....really SMART people learn from OTHER peoples mistakes" and here is another one "Assumption is the mother of al ****ups".
 
jono20 said:
I agree with both of you. I often peruse the Pro Before/After forum, and it is safe to say, a lot of those cars are PERFECT! Perfect in the sense that they have taken a Makita rotary with a wool pad and 105, and worn the surface of the vehicle down to the bottom of the deepest defect.



That's all well and good.. I'm just worried about them going back next year, or coming to me! I can't afford an ultrasonic paint thickness gauge, when I get a badly swirled, brushed, and webbed car I assume I'm working with factory paint, it's only begun to occur to me lately that maybe, just maybe, I'm not the only person to have ever laid pad to paint on this particular vehicle...
Click to expand...



200dollar investment not worth not having to pay a 1000+ dollars one time?



Plus you should have insurance
 
Some sorta-random thoughts follow:



-Some vehicles are too far gone to be corrected to any significant degree. In those cases you gotta just tell the owner that, even if it's not what he wants to hear. If they "don't care", give them a short version.



-Gotta resist falling for the "Curse of Autopia" where every vehicle either turns out 100% or it's a failure.



-It's not just strike-throughs you gotta worry about. Overthin the clear and a) you'll lose UV resistance and b) often you can actually *see* it, at least on metallics; they just look "wrong" in those spots, too light, too metallic (gee, guess how I know that :o ).



-If *you* overthin the paint, it's *your* fault.



-If you can get by without an ETG then OK, but that's risky and you're *taking* that risk. Had I not ETGed my pal's Jag I woulda trashed it (complete repaint, looked nice and uniform...but gee, a few spots were so thin I couldn't correct them at *all* but you couldn't tell by looking).



-There's no point in doing a 90% or better correction on a vehicle that's just gonna get marred up again. Or, at least it should be considered a very infrequent thing. If you need to polish more than once a year (your car, or a customer's car) the a) something's wrong and b) you gotta quit taking off all that clear before you have a problem.
 
Accumulator said:
Some sorta-random thoughts follow:



-Some vehicles are too far gone to be corrected to any significant degree. In those cases you gotta just tell the owner that, even if it's not what he wants to hear. If they "don't care", give them a short version.



-Gotta resist falling for the "Curse of Autopia" where every vehicle either turns out 100% or it's a failure.



-It's not just strike-throughs you gotta worry about. Overthin the clear and a) you'll lose UV resistance and b) often you can actually *see* it, at least on metallics; they just look "wrong" in those spots, too light, too metallic (gee, guess how I know that :o ).



-If *you* overthin the paint, it's *your* fault.



-If you can get by without an ETG then OK, but that's risky and you're *taking* that risk. Had I not ETGed my pal's Jag I woulda trashed it (complete repaint, looked nice and uniform...but gee, a few spots were so thin I couldn't correct them at *all* but you couldn't tell by looking).



-There's no point in doing a 90% or better correction on a vehicle that's just gonna get marred up again. Or, at least it should be considered a very infrequent thing. If you need to polish more than once a year (your car, or a customer's car) the a) something's wrong and b) you gotta quit taking off all that clear before you have a problem.
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My car gets all kinda marring in a year but its. A black car and it sees 35-40k miles in a year
 
Accumulator said:
Some sorta-random thoughts follow:





-Gotta resist falling for the "Curse of Autopia" where every vehicle either turns out 100% or it's a failure.



-There's no point in doing a 90% or better correction on a vehicle that's just gonna get marred up again. Or, at least it should be considered a very infrequent thing. If you need to polish more than once a year (your car, or a customer's car) the a) something's wrong and b) you gotta quit taking off all that clear before you have a problem.
Click to expand...



I think these are two GREAT points. Most people can’t even tell that the paint is FLAWLESS, they just seen a really shiny car with really clean wheels and they are more than happy. I think trying to get 100% correction on anything short of a show-car/garage queen is insane. That being said, I’m having a really hard time with this doing dealer work, because I look at the paint and see a lot of RIDS and getting frustrated that I cant get rid of them. Does the dealer care? They just want the holograms out of their ‘vettes.
 
-Gotta resist falling for the "Curse of Autopia" where every vehicle either turns out 100% or it's a failure.(end quote)



True, heavy etching won't come out unless you remove a ton of clear. Even if the owner is gonna ditch the car in a year or two would you want to be the guy who buys a car and a year later the paint is fading or peeling off? Overcorrection seems to be the norm around here.
 
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