After getting the beast painted last year, there was one remaining task that I kept putting off. Due to environmental regulations here, it is nearly impossible for a typical shop to do a respray without there being some orange peel texture to the clear coat. Apparently the big differences in costs of a paint job isn't in the spraying itself, it's the prep, materials and the 'paint correction'. Since I was able to get a wholesale respray, the paint correction portion of the job was going to fall on me.

I avoided it for over a year for a couple of reasons. One, the respray itself was really well done and the clear flowed out quite well. The car looked stunning...

...from the right distances and if you avoided certain angles. However, most people would never notice it and it looked better than some cars factory finishes. For awhile, I talked myself into to just leaving it alone and enjoying how much better it looked then it did with the failed clear coat.

Another reason is that I'd never done it before on a car, though I had done a similar process on a wood working project and remembered how much work it took on just a small piece of furniture. I knew it was not a simple weekend job, and I didn't have much spare time to begin with. However, the real reason was I just too scared to take sandpaper to the new paint job. What if I f'd up a perfectly nice paint job? What if I took off too much clear coat and reduced the useful life the paint job? It's a black car, and black is notoriously difficult to do paint correction. etc. etc.

Well, if you've read this far, you know I didn't chicken out and I foolishly took sandpaper to a perfectly good paint job. My family thought I'd lost my mind and would walk into the garage and shake their heads. Before I started, I searched the web on how to do it, watched numerous youtube videos, read articles, and so forth, but there still seemed to be less about how to exactly do it. Through the research and the actual process of doing it I did learn a few things that I thought I should pass on:

- Clay Bar first. Whatever it pulls out, you don't want your sandpaper pushing around the finish.
- Don't wet sand with just water. Mix in a little Dawn detergent, and don't use any other type of detergent. Put the mix in both a spray bottle and a bucket. Rinse the paper in the mix twice as frequently as you think you should. Spray the area you want to sand, don't just use the paper out of the bucket to wet the area.
- 3M sand paper is more expensive, but there is a reason to pay for it. The 3M 2000 grit cut more efficiently and effectively than the auto chain store brand 1500 grit.
- Do not sand it fully flat until you are on your least-aggressive sanding pass (in my case it was 2000 and if you pay attention you'll get a feel for and see how much you have to use the 1500 before switching to 2000)
- Listen and feel, you'll develop a knack of how things are going and you won't over do it.
- Sand in one direction. Not back and forth, and not in a circular motion. I don't know why this is, and maybe an expert could chime in, but it just works better at leveling out and takes less effort polishing out. Sand in the direction the wind flows over the car.
- The Porter Cable 7424XP polisher is great for the novice. This is such a time consuming project, it's easy to get impatient or too aggressive, fortunately the clutch saved me from myself a few times.

Believe it or not, it took me five full days to do the entire car. I suppose you could do it a lot faster with a DA sander or just more confidence, but I'm glad I took the tortoise route and did it all the sanding by hand. Overall, I'm glad I did it, but I don't want to do it again anytime soon. No wonder show car paint jobs are so expensive.

Cheers

 

Sounds right, I've rattle can resprayed parts of my failing clearcoat it turns out well when you finish with 4000grit and then a mild polish (which is usually a far higher grit than 4k)

Tip for finishing and detailing: non-staining plumbers puddy works the same as clay bars for a fraction the cost.

 

Believe it!

 

Congrats on completing the job! Let's see some pictures.