While watching TRUCKS on TNN today they polished out factory orange peel by first wet sanding soome then using a pollisher and some mild abrasive wax from Meguiars. Is this pretty easy to do or does it take a long time and a lot of hard work. My car is not bad but its annoying. Over the winter I would like to get a cowl hood on, fix all the scratches and the few faded spots on teh bumper covers and get all the orange peel off.

Will it kill my clear coat?
Any of you guys ever do it or should I get a shop to do it?

 

^^

Not something I would recommend a first-timer attempt on his car either. Get a junkyard panel and practice....

 

Is it going to take away my clear coat?

 

Yep, that's the point...sanding down the clearcoat. That's why you should use a thickness meter to check the thickness of the clearcoat, but one of those costs $$$$.

 

It takes alot of practice to do it correct, but if you still try to do it stay away from the edges and corners and cover them with take before compounding and yes on a cured finish it will be very hard to remove the peel and get the shine back. I wouldnt recomend a newby to do this on his pride and joy.

 

hmmm I might just get the car re-painted, that or find someone to mess with it who knows what they are doing.

 

I work for a guy that professionally details cars. However he does the sanding and more difficult stuff. This thursday we are going to get all the orange peel out of my car. First thing he told me was we are going to start at 12:00 and end at prolly 9:00. That gives you an idea. He gave me a couple videos to watch from meguiars, and when I go back to get my car done hes going to have me practice on a tail gate from a dodge he got from a junk yard. Basically you are working with the space of a human hair. Meaning you could go to far when sanding and actually hit paint, that is bad. Just go pick up a pannel or something from a junk yard, ask around on what products you will need to do this, and just practice.

 

Its really not that bad of a job....I just got done spotting in on my driver's side door because i had some minor damage there. When I added the clear, the rest of the door was gonna have some orange peel on it from the added clear. So i knew i was gonna be wet sanding. Typically the reason u should practice before u touch ur car is because, remember that the paint on your car is the final thing. If you burn into the clear on top of the paint, then your screwed. I have always used 1200-1500 fine grit paper for wet sanding, sometimes the orange peel could be a little more rough. I havent run into many situations where 1200 couldnt take them out tho. Just keep your hand flat to the panel of the car as possible and rub smoothly and make sure no dirt,dust,hair, anything is caught between the panel and ur sandpaper either ( you can usually hear if something is when ur swiping the paper ). Then after u get the paint and clear nice and dull and very very smooth with tiny tiny scratches in it. You buff it out with some type of compound. This fulls those tiny tiny scratches and brings out the shine again. After that take some polish and rub it in over the area u just wet sanded and buffed, and now it looks absolutly great and you will notice a difference and guess what.....NO ORANGE PEEL If you have any questions feel free to ask, ive been down the route many times.

cory

 

I have a question. When I just did my car this past thursday, my detailer said he ran into a problem he never ran into before. After using the compound and polish to restore shine, there are very tiny scratches in the car, that you can only see under certain types of light, I just washed my car and im going to go wax with nxt to see if I can remove some of them being they are very very tiny. What went wrong here? And I know my detailer knows what hes doing, he details cars from actual movies.

 

nothing really went wrong...a perfectly detailed paint job is always going to have tiny tiny tiny scratches....its only bad when u can see these scratches with the naked eye in the daylight or even under a semi flouresent light. If these scratches are extremely tiny like im hoping they are, then a nice coat of paste wax will fill them in and bring out a beautful shine. Usually wax will fill in any tiny scratches left behind after fine wet sanding and buffing. You should be good to go...go get paste wax...rub it in real good by hand...let it sit and dry for a few minutes...them rub it away, im sure ull see the results and be very pleased.

cory

 

Hmm I wish I would have saw this earlier. So what I did was used my little $20 buffer, applied some NXT wax and it looks a lot better. Not as good as I want it to be, but definately better. I mean out in the day light you can barely see anything, but under my garage flourecent lights you can see a lot. It just bugs me that there are scratches in my paint. I think in time if I keep waxing it, it will turn out better. Sometime this week Ill give your advice a try. What kind of paste wax do you reccomend? Do you mean like rub it in with your actual hand or just by like applicator pads?

 

anything your going to apply by hand usually will turn out better....funny how things always seem to work better when done by hand huh?

I have found that Meguires Clear Coat Paste Wax has always worked the best for me on any clear coat car I've put it on. Its not to expensive, and I think my most recent purchase of it was actually at the local wal-mart for around $8.00. Not to bad at all...

cory