Thoughts on wet sanding factory paint

What are your thoughts on wet sanding factory paint? I know it can be done but you need to be very careful since factory cc is very thin yada yada yada.

What I am interested in discussing is... Do you think all the protection and/or UV protection is in the outer most layer?

I have talked to a few body men painters including my brother who is a painter for a living and he has also gone to a few classes and talked to a few paint reps and they all say that if you do not have to break the outer shell of the paint, hence, wet sand you should not do it because this outer layer has the most protection in it and the car will be more susceptible to bird bombs, acid rain etching and possibly even fading. Most will say if it is a garage queen or show car you are usually OK.

What are your thoughts?

I have done quite a few cars and have never had a problem or seen any type of cc failure due to this but do suspect that there is some truth to what the painters are saying.

Of course on repaints where the painter is expecting to cut the paint in order to provide a 100% smooth finish they usually lay down extra cc which is fine. It is the factory paint that is questionable.

There is also a company in Calif that does nothing but this, I am sure some of you have heard of them, glossycar. It seems they have no issues either.

A painting forum would probably be a better place for this discussion but I do not know of any.

 

hey this looks similar lol.

You thoughts on wet sanding factory paint - Autopia.org

 

Yes, trying to get every ones opinion. I put it on 4 different forums.

 

Well, the way I understand it from my personal research is that you are leveling high points in the paint, therefore it is not like you are removing a substantial layer of the underlying clearcoat. I don't think those high points comprise of the majority of the protection that clear coats offer to the base coat, and wetsanding is merely bringing those high points to the level of the surrounding paint.

Another alternative is to wetsand but leave some peel there to be on the safer side of things while still achieving great results.

 

Orange Peel

Orange peel is paint film surface that has a dimpled or textured appearance that paint takes on due to an equipment/operator caused defect. Like wrong paint-gun pressure and/or distance from panel, an operator not knowing how to set-up the equipment to get a good enough mixture to atomize for that particular type of paint, or even a partly blocked paint-gun nozzle, improper pre-paint preparation and /or paint application, or uneven drying of the clear coat.

It should be eliminated after the final shooting of clear coat by wet sanding the paint film surface, and polishing with a mildly abrasive polish and a high-speed rotary polisher.
Painting a horizontal panel with any of the above equipment operator defects, the paint tends to ‘run’ resulting in both thick and thin ridges. Removing the thicker ridges will result in a level but ‘thin’ paint surface (See also Paint Thickness Gauge (PTG))

Correction- it can be removed (with limitations) by wet-sanding (colour sanding)

This kind of work should only be undertaken by a very experienced enthusiast or a professional detailer; experienced in colour-sanding (wet-sanding) / paint renovation, more so than detailing, someone who uses a paint thickness gauge (PTG) to measure and document the vehicles paint. This is a technique that takes a lot of practice to perfect.

Ultra violet protection (UVR)

A clear coat paint (isocyanate polyurethane) provides the colour and base coats with protection, and usually has UVR protection added in the final coating; this tends to migrate towards the upper level of the clear coat (this is why it’s important to check how much of the paint surface you are removing with an abrasive polish)

If too much clear is removed, either on the original OEM finish or the refinished areas (colour coat 0.3–0.5 and total paint 1.8MIL thickness min) a warranty issue may develop down the road it’s interesting to note that painters must now demonstrate proficiency with an electronic paint thickness gauge in order to become certified to perform refinish warranty work for General Motors Corp. (GM) vehicles.

Removing more that 0.5 mil (12µ) of clear coat will cause premature paint film failure as UV protection percolates to the top of the clear coat. UVR protection is a sacrificial / renewable component; this is due to the UV protection layer being degraded by exposure to the elements (sun, sand, road or sea salt, and etc) it is also water miscible, so it is imperative that you renew it and needs to be re-applied on a regular basis (dependent upon location climatic condition)

here is no such thing as a permanent UV stabilizer, it a matter of physics, not chemistry. The half-life of paint UV protection is 5 years (exponential decay) the half-life of a quantity whose value decreases with time is the interval required for the quantity to decay to half of its initial value.

An extract from one of a series of unbiased Detailing Technical Papers, a library of educational materials that has become the #1 reference for car care on the Internet. Chances are you'll learn something and advance your knowledge of detailing if you read any of these.

© TOGWT ™ Ltd Copyright 2002-2010, all rights reserved. ​