Can you use opti coat before you wet sand a car to help build up a layer of protection to prevent clear coat failure?
who wants to take a stab at this one..... no takers? mate if you are wet sanding you WANT to remove the ridges at the very top layer of clear coat thus to get to the clear coat, you will be removing any wax or sealant on the very surface anyway
totally agree. by the way a nice lady here in oregon from australia calls me her old cobber. what exactly does that mean?
If you apply OOC prior to sanding, it will be gone with the first or second pass. It is a method of paint protection, not a viable clear-coat replacement. However, adding it after sanding and prepping will add a layer of UV protection decreasing the likely hood of CC failure (unless you took off too much). It will also decrease the accumulation of surface contaminants which should mean less polishing to maintain, unless your wash method induces damage.
My interpretation is that he wants to use Opti-coat to fill the valleys of the orange peel so that he can essentially wetsand and remove or round off the high peaks of the clearcoat while controlling removal rates due to Opti-coat resisting removal from the wetsanding. In theory, this would mean that the orange peel could be lessened more safely by having Opti-coat filling the valleys and acting as a bump stop to keep clearcoat removal to a minimum.
Sobelsaint i insist that you email dr g himself he's very reachable this is an intriguing idea if it works info@optimumcarcare.com dont forget to post your findings back
Opticoat does NOT resist removal from abrasives. Polish will remove it, compound will remove it, and certainly sanding will remove it. It will NOT fill in valleys or scratches...it's not that thick. It is resistant to solvents and airborne contaminants. The functionality of OptiCoat is one of highly durable paint protection, NOT paint replacement. Another point is on why you are wetsanding. If you are trying to level factory paint, you might want to reconsider as factory coatings are pretty thin considering they will need polishing several times over the life of the car. If however, you are wetsanding a respray, there is usually plenty of clear and there would be no reason for "filling" unless you are too aggressive. Which brings me to my final concern. Sanding should only be done by an experienced re-conditioner. If you don't have experience, proper equipment, and a paint gauge, orange peel could be the least of your problems. I have been using OC since it was in beta and am familiar with it capabilities, I hope this information is helpful to you.
In light of that, let me explain why the question is a bit daft, if you stop to think for a moment. Paintwork is indeed far from perfectly flat - having a multitude of peaks and troughs. However, it's equally daft to believe a waxed/sealed surface will be flat too, as the product will bond to the peaks as well as the troughs. You have to bear in mind that LSPs only go on at thicknesses of Angstroms, not microns, with the exception possibly (to be confirmed/verified) of the likes of Aquartz and GTechniq. Anyway, so you've a surface still resembling a mountain range, to which you're going to use an inverse mountain range (the abrasive paper/pad) to flatten. You will flatten it a bit, but in doing so, you will be introducing new troughs by the peaks of the paper/pad being used. And if that wasn't enough, you then have the polishing compounds doing the same thing to your newly "flattened" paintwork. Lastly, if you were able to fill the troughs with O-S, how would you/the paper/pad know when it was down to it, and not through it? O-S is not harder than clearcoat, nor would you get any sort of resistance or noise to signify when you were hitting it. That's why flatting paint back via wet sanding is not something the first-timer wants to get into without fully understanding how paint is, and preferably not without having tried it on a scrap bit of bodywork to get a feel and idea of what's entailed to gain the most from doing the process. So, one for the memory banks - wet sanding is more abrasive than any clearcoat or LSP's hardness is, for very obvious reasons. Otherwise repairs would be unable to be undertaken if it wasn't. Same for the more abrasive compounds, used to remove the wet sanding matte look.
