It all started with a reflection

[erw38]

Aurora40 said:

Wetsanding can help with deep scracthes and swirls. And it can help to remove orange peel. Of course it also removes clearcoat and the protection afforded by it. The more you sand away, the less protection the color coat has and the more likely the clear will fail down the road.

If all you want to accomplish is to brighten the paint, you can most likely do this with a good chemical cleaner and your two hands.

Much of a paints depth comes from the color and the paint itself. Certainly a dirty or oxidized layer on the clear will reduce this. To get maximum depth on clean paint, you mainly need glazes and waxes that help to emphasis depth. There is some tradeoff in depth vs reflection. If you put a very shiny protectant on, then the reflection is at the surface and there is little depth.

Anyway, I would suggest a good claying and a good chemical cleaner as your first start. Then you can go from there to see what more you want out of the finish and if it is achievable. I definitely wouldn't risk wetsanding just for that. Especially on a car with older paint and questionable history (I assume you didn't own it new, thus who knows if it's been wetsanded or heavily polished in the past? Who knows how much of the clear is left?)

Feel free to start a new thread in "Exterior" or to PM me if you want, or to just ignore me.

I have actually already clayed the car once. Its been close to 8 months or so since then. Is their such a thing as to much claying? I have also done a coat of rubbing compound on the car which greatly increased the depth of the paint. I guess the paint was highly oxidized when I got the car. I actually read a thread somewhere in which they wetsanded a Escalade. Granted it was black, but it looked amazing afterwards. Also, I have a few scratched that I would like to try and take car of. They are on the trunk ( I think that someone must have set something on it and then slid that item off). Don't know if it was me, but that is besides the point. I just want it to look good. I want the "darkness" of the red to shine through and I want it to reflect like neve before Is it possible (without repainting) or am I dreaming?

Please enlighten me with your wisdom.

[Aurora40]

Hey Elan,

How much brightness you can get will depend on the quality of the paint, and how well it's retained that quality over the years.

Also, shine and depth are not really the same thing. If you can get the paint clean, then you can usually achieve pretty impressive shine/reflection from a protectant that offers high-shine. Zaino is one example of a product that does this. It is very shiny, and much of that shine comes from the actual product on the paint, though if your paint is in poor shape it will affect the ability of a topcoat to be reflective.

Wetsanding is typically to remove orange peel (which will lead to better reflection and certainly contributes to that "WOW" look), or to remove deeper imperfections like scratches or bad swirls.

Just for brightening the paint, it would in my opinion be way overkill. In addition there is a danger anytime you remove paint. There is only so much clearcoat applied to the car. The more you remove, the less resistance the paint has to UV damage. The thing is, is that you always remove it, but never add it back. So you don't want to be more aggressive than you need to be.

Wetsanding is quite aggressive, and it removes paint at a rate so as to be pretty easy to measure the difference with a thickness gauge. Granted you can use varying grits and such, but all will remove paint in a manner I'd consider aggressive (a body shop or other people may not, but hey, I'm the one replying). This is ok if you know how much clear you have, and how much you are comfortable removing. This makes it especially ok if you are painting the car. You can lay on extra clear knowing you will wetsand it down afterwards to remove orange peel, etc.

But on a used car, you have no idea how much clear is left. Has the car been aggressively buffed in the past? Has it been buffed several times in an effort to shine it up for sale? By an owner who wasn't that mindful? Etc? How much clear is there? If you don't know that, it's hard to know how much you can safely remove. Also, wetsanding will leave the paint hazy, and you'll need to buff away even more paint to restore the finish after sanding.

But the main thing is, if all you want to do is make the paint fresher looking, you can likely do this without wetsanding your paint. You need to remove any old, oxidized or stained paint from the surface to reveal fresher paint underneath. This is basically what polishing and wetsanding does anyway, just in varying degrees of aggressiveness.

If you used a rubbing compound by hand, there's a good chance you left the surface in a less-than-ideal state. Most rubbing compounds are fairly aggressive, have rather clunky abrasives to remove paint rapidly, and leave it somewhat hazed. Especially by hand where there is no heat or strong mechanical action to break the compound down. This hazing may not be apparent from a distance, but usually is under the right lighting, and will definitely detract from the overall appearance of the car. If you have hazing/swirling from this, I would suggest you use a less aggressive abrasive polish to help level the paint out and remove the hazing. A chemical cleaner can be used, but they are not as good at leveling paint, they are good at removing just oxidized paint and staining, but tend to not be effective on healthy paint (which is what makes them such nice tools). If you have hazed the paint, you'll need to remove healthy paint to bring it all to the same level and smooth out where the hazing is. This is easiest with a mild abrasive product.

The ultimate goal is to make the paint as uniform as possible.

For the scratches on your trunk, you can wetsand that and then polish the haze out. I would suggest you try to polish them out first, and only try wetsanding if the polishing is unsuccessful. Best to start off not aggressive enough, then ramp up than to start off too aggressive and try to ramp down.

[erw38]

Bob,

I appreciate he detailed answer. I have tried cleaning the trunk with Meguires Scratch X, but it didn't work. I plan of washing thins weekend and putting of a nice coat of Meguires Mirror Reflection (I doubt that's the name, but it is watever comes in the black bottle.) I have read some stuff online about washing then polishing, then glazing, sealing and finally waxing. I don't know how inclined I'd be to go through all those steps, but I guess it will depend on my mood then. I go have the meguires cleaner/wax in paste form the I have used before, but I don't know how aggressive that is. Do you think /I should use that again? Like I said, I did the claying and rubbing compount stuff almost a year or so ago (after I got the car). I would do it again, but I do not want to ruin the car's paint so that my only option would be to repaint. I know I am yapping on and on here so please exuse me, but when it comes to waxing and cleaning a car I am the most ignorant person out there. Thank you for your input thus far.

Elan

[Aurora40]

Hey Elan, if you aren't up for doing 3-4 steps on the car, you DEFINITELY should not wetsand it. It's a pretty grueling process. You'll work your arms to the max to wetsand a big car like the Aurora. And then it'll look like crap, all hazy. You will then have to polish the sanding marks out, probably then polish out the haze left by a polish aggressive enough to remove sanding marks, then a glaze and wax.

Cleaner/Wax is a very mild product. It is nice on oxidation and a nice one-step to save time, though. But for swirls or whatever, it's not gonna do much.

I would suggest you use a light polish, though. I suspect it will help as a follow up to the rubbing compound. No matter how long ago you did the rubbing compound, if it left haze, it'll still be there. It won't fade away anymore than scratches will fade away. As a bonus, there are plenty of light polishes that are suitable for hand use, it'll give the paint a light cleaning, and they often have glazing features that leave the paint very glossy and ready for waxing.

Two I can suggest are Meguiar's #9 Swirl Remover or Meguiar's #82 Swirl Free Polish. One of my absolute faves, but it does start out a bit more aggressive but break down very fast, is #80 Speed Glaze. It leaves a beautiful glossy finish, much like a non-abrasive glaze does.

There are also 3M products, and probably a hundred others that perform similarly. I tend to use Meguiar's polishes. In fact, the only other abrasive polishes I really have are Pinnacle products. They have a product called "Swirl Remover" that works nicely and would perform similarly. It's not as glazy, though.

I am assuming you have Medallion Premium Paint Protection, which unfortunately was discontinued for 2005 due to California regulations that will affect a lot of detailing products in the near future (and already has affected a lot). I find this to have a high shine, and acceptable gloss and depth. It's a good well-rounded look. But I suspect if you try a carnauba-based wax on your red car, that you will see more gloss and depth, albeit less overall reflection and shine.

So you could basically do 4 steps:
- Wash
- Clay (or just spot clay areas that feel rough)
- Light polish
- Wax

I'm only guessing at the condition your paint is in, but this would be a good maintenance routine anyway.

I hope this is helpful. I don't want to tell you want to do (I've never even seen your car), but hopefully it's educational enough to help you know what you need to do. Let me know if it isn't.

[OldsMike]

Aurora40 said:

The more you remove, the less resistance the paint has to UV damage.

UV goes through all the clearcoat, the basecoat and the primer. Materials are added to the paint recipe to fight the effects of UV Radiation.

As an aside, I worked with a GM Engineer who was involved in the paint issues GM had during the 80's. Whole sections of paint would separate from the vehicle, usually from the roof and hood, as large as a foot in diameter (sometimes larger). There was nothing wrong with the clearcoat or the basecoat but GM had changed the Primer. Those materials for UV were either missing or were changed (I don't remember anymore). The primer decayed and lost adhesion to the metal. Try to keep the car out of the daylight as much as possible when you aren't using it, the paint and the interior will show better as the years pass by....

[Aurora40]

OldsMike said:

UV goes through all the clearcoat, the basecoat and the primer. Materials are added to the paint recipe to fight the effects of UV Radiation.

I think that is very unlikely. Even a sheet of notebook paper will stop UV light. I'm quite sure a colorcoat will stop it, and the clearcoat should be able to as well due to additives or what-not (paint is a plastic of sorts, and many clear plastics will block UV naturally, like polycarbonate for example). Light can't pass through the color coat, and that's all UV is. Just light not in the visible spectrum.

Certainly primer problems will cause the whole paint to fail, though.

[OldsMike]

Aurora40 said:

I think that is very unlikely. Even a sheet of notebook paper will stop UV light. I'm quite sure a colorcoat will stop it, and the clearcoat should be able to as well due to additives or what-not (paint is a plastic of sorts, and many clear plastics will block UV naturally, like polycarbonate for example). Light can't pass through the color coat, and that's all UV is. Just light not in the visible spectrum.

Certainly primer problems will cause the whole paint to fail, though.

Just relaying information that was told to me from a GM Engineer who had intimate knowledge of the root cause at the time....

[blackandsilver]

What is claying---I just used the 3 step meguires process and it turned out pretty decent--I have a black 2001 and there are some light scratching I would like to remove. So what is claying?

[Aurora40]

blackandsilver said:

What is claying---I just used the 3 step meguires process and it turned out pretty decent--I have a black 2001 and there are some light scratching I would like to remove. So what is claying?

Claying is a process of gliding a specific type of automotive detailing clay over the surface of your paint. The clay will glide on the paint due to the lubrication you provide, but will abrade/pull away any bonded on contaminents. It is used for removing defects above the surface of the paint, like sap, tar, rail dust, bugs, and other things that have bonded on the paint. If you run your hand over your clean paint, you might feel a rough surface. Clay will help with this.

Clay will not affect below surface defects like scratches. And if you are not careful with clay, you can inflict more scratches as clay is abrasive (the lube is the key, as well as keeping the clay clean).

If you have more specific questions, you can feel free to PM me or anyone else, or you might want to start a new thread titled "what is claying" or "how can I get rid of these swirls" or something like that?