Run out of Clear Coat

I am not attacking your knowledge. I was interested though in how you think you can tell clear coat thickness by eye. The things you mentioned can give you a rough idea and warning signs that there may be a problem with the thickness but you can't say for sure how much clear is there.

I had the same attitude as most people that it was hard to go through clear and hit base coat especially with a PC. That was until I did it! I can assure you I was not being aggressive with product or pad. There were no signs of the clear being thin or defective. The car was new and I hit base coat on a couple applications of Megs Dual Action Cleaner Polish with a Yellow Megs Pad. Ever since than I am extremely cautious about how aggressive and how often I polish. Than I am beyond anal with my wash and dry technique to maintain the finish.

The thing is I read many posts on these car forums and people talk like the clear coat is a foot thick and you can polish endlessly without worry. I am just letting them know that it's easier than you think to go through the clear.
 
I see I misunderstood you then Anthony ( also my middle name BTW!) .

I think that beign aggressive on an entire car is overkill, I have only seem a couple of cars that actually needed to be completely course cut and they were both Single stage paint.
 
I find this topic interesting. I bought a pc about a year ago and wanted to take a scratch out of my Corvette door. Everyone on the corvette Forum said you could not buff through the clear coat with a PC. I used a lake country orange pad and meg#83 and set the pc on 4.5 run it about a minute and remove it to check the finish. I had a spot about the size of a quarter that was really dull I had buffed through the clear coat. They still are telling people don't worry one poster their posted this week that you can run a pc for an hour in the same spot and not go through. Just goes to show that you should not believe everything you read on the internet. After paying to get my car repainted I'm much more cautious about compounding the finish.
I'm certainly no expert but I know from experience that a pc WILLgo through the clear coat I have the bill to prove it.
 
Yeah the attitude seems to be that you can't damage paint with the PC. If that is true than you can't correct paint with the PC either. In order to correct paint you have to level it which means removeing some. If you can remove paint with a PC than it's certainly possible to remove too much with repeated/extended use of aggressive products/pads with the PC.
 
Anthony A said:
Yeah the attitude seems to be that you can't damage paint with the PC. If that is true than you can't correct paint with the PC either. In order to correct paint you have to level it which means removeing some. If you can remove paint with a PC than it's certainly possible to remove too much with repeated/extended use of aggressive products/pads with the PC.
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good point!
 
Folks
How does it look when you buff down to the base coat?? Can you see the edges of the crater where the clear coat is still left ? Anybody has any images of a job then went south ?
 
gandblah said:
Folks
How does it look when you buff down to the base coat?? Can you see the edges of the crater where the clear coat is still left ? Anybody has any images of a job then went south ?
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Depends on the color. When I hit base coat it was on metallic silver. The base coat actually was darker than the rest of the paint. What happened was when I hit the base coat I was polishing the metallic flakes and this changes the color very noticeably. If you try to fix a paint chip on metallic silver when you wet sand the paint blob you will see what I mean. The color changes because you are working the metallic flakes.

On a black car you will notice a dull look compared to a clear coated area. Also on almost all colors you will see paint on the pad. Ever polish a single stage paint? The pads get paint on them. When you hit base coat same thing.
 
Yep my car is black and when I went through the clear coat I had a spot the size of a quarter that was very dull and all around it was a very high gloss. If you ever do it you will know it. I was trying to remove a scratch about 1 inch long. My Corvette is a 89 and I bought it used and I think the CC was very thin when I bought it. I had the car stripped then primed and a base coat then 8 coats of clear coat put on it. I'm still very careful washing it because I don't want to be polishing it all the time even though it would take a lot of buffing to go through now.
 
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