For those of you with a PTG

Do you guys take paint readings during and after the details?? Or do you just get a baseline reading before and then dive into polishing? A lot of the pictures that I see of thickness readings are of the paint before but none after polishing. It'd be interesting to see the differences in thickness before and after polishing on a variety of vehicles.

 

You would be suprised on how little is removed, even with aggressive compounding.

There is a thread on pictopia with results showing that a PC will remove more clear trying to get out deep RIDS then a rotary will. Wetsanding even less.

 

If I have trouble areas where I'm concentrating on getting something out such as a bird dropping, or heavy scratch, I use the PTG after every pass.

Other than that, I just use it to go across the car and get a good baseline reading before I start to polish.

 

Thanks for the info, interesting. I think I read that post on Autopia but it didn't include any pictures. Since that topic was brought up, what happened to the idea that a PC doesn't remove swirls, but it only rounds the edges to make them less visible?

 

I've started taking readings before polishing and after polishing budman3 becuase I want to know exactly how much clear coat I'm removing and like gmblack3 said I was shocked to find that I was hardly removing any clear coat...all depending on how bad I compound the vehicle ofcourse.

The only issue is that it's hard to remember the exact spots that you took the first paint gauge readings, I try to remember but 10 to 15hrs of polishing I kinda forget the exact spots. I normaly take about 50 to 100 paint gauge readings and what I've done is I take the exact same and at least 3 to 5 readings per panel...depending on how big the panel is. For example on the entire door I will take a total of 7 to 10 readings...so I've been trying to manipulate the same amount of readings as the before polishing readings and just taking the average.

Long story short, like I said I was shocked to see how much clear coat I was actually removing.

I should start posting the readings before and after though...like I said I was doing this for my self though but I'll post the afters...good tip budman3 :thumb:

 

Thanks for the info Nica. I remember 3-4 years ago someone from Meguiar's or who used Meg's products did a comparison on a junk hood and took readings before and after. But that was years ago and it seems PTGs are more popular now and I was just curious if hard clears = more clear removed or soft = more clear removed, things like that.

 

Why dont you buy one and perform said test and let us know what your opinion is on it.

 

its just too damn expensive... maybe one day i can afford one

 

Why don't you stay on topic with the post and keep everything else to yourself. If you don't have an answer, move on to the next post. Simple.

 

It is, if you bought one it would answer all these questions you have that is why others have purchased the equipment. Plus I figured at your level you would give us a few pointers on paint gauges that we already own.

 

I am always happy to help others who don't yet have some equipment. Helping others is what these forums are all about IMO.

 

That's a good point there budman3, that is a very interesting question you got.....:thinking: :thinking: man I wish I took after readings on that MDX we did that clear coat was extremely soft :doh: :doh: but that is a very good question, thanks for sharing.

And yes, I agree with gmblack3 forums are meant to help others or provide feed back on tools that others don't have but are considering to purchase, you know to make a better educated purchase. I don't understand the hostility here So lets not turn this in to a bashing post as I think the question is a very good question eace:

 

PEACE not WAR...... please keep the love in the air...

 

:hippie: :hippie: I need a hippier smilie :shead: :shead: :shead:

 

Nica, I am all about helping and keeping the peace, but for someone to ask questions about equipment and then spouts off about knowing so much on other forums you would think they would have all the equipment to back up all this so called knowledge. Thats all I was getting at. Its easy to weed out who really should be helped and then there are those on here for other reasons, was just trying to point that out.

 

It would be fairly hard to get 100% accurate readings to see if there are any differences with the amount of clear removed from both soft and hard paints. I think the only way to tell is to do the exact same process on both types of vehicles. However, the results would be very interesting.

And to add to the original question about taking readings after, have you ever noticed a spot which you removed too much paint? Or do the amounts of clear removed stay fairly constant around the whole vehicle -- ie once you know the baseline clear, you can decide how aggressive you can go and be confident that you will not remove too much clear following your normal polishing routines.

 

Well the point of a paint gauge is to to show all the flaw's in the paint this includes low and high spots, the graph is great for showing these low and high spots. I've noticed that once I take the readins after the polish that there aren't too many high spots..there still are a few becuase I don't isolate the high spots from the clear coat..meaning I don't mark the high spots that I find and insure I level them off...this is something that I'll start doing now that I have all my paint gauges, it's a bit time consuming but if you truly want perfection you have to level off the high spots to give it an even area...I learned this from Paul Dalton him self.

But even though I don't mark the high spots I do make a note of the low spots, that is a must because I adjust the polishin process based on the amount of clear that is available...like that yellow Z06 we could polish becuase it hardly had any clear coat left.

 

Thanks for the help again Nica. I never really understood the graphs because you take so many readings the high points would be impossible to distinguish without marking them right on the car after you took the reading. Unless the graphs are used in a different way -- do you take sinle line readings on the panel or do you use some type of grid system?

 

How much paint are you removing. - Car Care Forums: Meguiar's Online


How much material (paint) is removed by the various processes of finish care that we perform on our vehicles in our endeavour for that brilliant shine.

To demonstrate how much material is removed I acquired a damaged MBZ hood from a body shop that to the best of my knowledge still wears the original factory applied two stage black base / clear coat finish.