Wet sanding clear coat...with lots of photos!

[AKcharger]

Hi Guys

Well it's not a Charger but principal is the same. I painted my lil' truck this summer, my first full paint, and WOW, what a learning experience! I'm glad I practiced on this as opposed to one of my Chargers cosidering how may times I messed stuff up! Below is my experience with wet sanding and buffing, again an first for me but I think it came out OK. I ran the clear coat pretty good...twice, so the last shot of clear I was very conservitive. Good news was no runs, bad news was some pretty think orange peal. So if this happens to you here's what to do:

[AKcharger]

I was pretty agressive and hit it first with 400 grit on a sanding block. I used warm water with a bit of dish detergent and moved fore and aft, not in circles. 400 may be much but after all the problems with runs I shot like 8 coats of clear on the car, so no worries about burning through

[AKcharger]

Here's 1000 grit. I use a sanding block then a smaller flexible block in the tight areas. Surface turns very smooth, with slight satin finish when done and dry

[AKcharger]

1500 grit, it's starting to show a bit of shine

[AKcharger]

2000, here I used just the flexible block and you could see the paint was trying real hard to shine again!

[AKcharger]

Done!  here I hit it with my quality Communist Chineese buffer I got from Shucks® and a product called "333" which is a one step compound and it worked real well for a beginner. I was MUCHO carful around edges and kept the buffer moving all the time. I also buffed till all the product was gone, then reapplied some more. I buffed till a nice gloss appeared and then about 2-3 minutes more and called it good. Biggest thing was to make sure all the scratches were removed from the previous sanding.

[AKcharger]

OK, experts out there feel free to comment/make suggestions, you aren't going to hurt my feelings 

[Silver R/T]

Looking pretty good. However you could've saved a lot of labor/materials if you were to spray it with the guy setup right in first place. Pretty much all you'd have to do is to sand some dirt nibs out of it and that's it.
Which gun/clear did you use? Looks pretty good paint job on daily driver. I'm sure it was great learning experience so it's all that matters

[Rubberduck]

Pretty impressive.
How long did you work on that sanding and buffing?



Mario

[dads_69]

Looks awesome Bill!    That'll be one heck of nice winter driver here. The snow will melt off of it, ha-ha. Yea, I'm a summer type guy vs. winter, yet I'm still here.

Mark

[Troy]

Very nice! I've been afraid to tackle that on one of my cars but I will one of these days. Too bad I sold all the beater trucks before trying it on them. Maybe I need another... 

Troy

[hemi-hampton]

How many hours did it take to sand   LEON.

[oldrock]

+1 nice job! We did my son's 72 charger ourselves and it didn't come out nearly as shiney but my son was low on funds so we had to scrimp on the number of clearcoats. We also didn't sand to 2000, we just sanded to 1200 and then followed with polish. I'd also like to hear how many hours the sanding and buffing took. We estimated our charger took us about 15 hours start to finish and that was just sanding to 1200.

Also would you share what primer, paint and clear you used?

[quapman]

VERY nice!

Silver, any basic gun setup tips? I got some peel myself clearing the underside of a hood last week.

Thanks

[mopar73]

OK, experts out there feel free to comment/make suggestions, you aren't going to hurt my feelings 

The photo's speak for themselves Great job and learning experience!

[Silver R/T]

VERY nice!

Silver, any basic gun setup tips? I got some peel myself clearing the underside of a hood last week.

Thanks

There's no easy way to tell someone how to lay out paint/clear. It all just comes from experience. Don't expect to pick up a gun and shoot show car. I like to lay out clear so I add extra reducer. There's too many variables to having it lay out nice, amount of reduction, tip size, air pressure, distance...

[chargerscott]

how long did you wait to sand it after to clear coated?

[quapman]

VERY nice!

Silver, any basic gun setup tips? I got some peel myself clearing the underside of a hood last week.

Thanks

There's no easy way to tell someone how to lay out paint/clear. It all just comes from experience. Don't expect to pick up a gun and shoot show car. I like to lay out clear so I add extra reducer. There's too many variables to having it lay out nice, amount of reduction, tip size, air pressure, distance...

I figured as much, but thanks anyway.  I was looking more for pressure/fan settings than technique. 

[72sechargerman]

Well for what you spent on clear, sand paper, and labor you sure saved alot Not to mention a polished car shows every scratch and or scuff that you get. But hey it looks like you got the body pretty straight before shooting it

[mauve66]

what if the orange peel is in the paint and not the clear??  how do you strip off all the clear and know that your down to the paint to start over with wet sanding the paint?
sorry to try and hijack

[AKcharger]

To answer your questions:
- Silver, so your saying if I did it right the first time I wouldn't have to do all this extra work?...I never thought about it that way   just messin' with ya', you're right, I made a few goofs but hey, ya' live and ya' learn and hopefully you guys out there can learn from my mistakes. (see post this section "runs in clear coat...grrrr") I had 2 basic problems with my clear: 1) the first 2 times I cleared, I had the wrong gun and went too heavy on the 1st coat. The gun, new "Kobalt" from Lowes had a 1.4 needle but did not "fan" properly...thanks to Mark (AKA Dad's 69) for the help on figuring the gun problem out. With Marks advice I went and bought a $130 Warwick gun, worked fine. The heavy coat was experience, it looked right and went on perfect! for 2 minutes, then ran. When I did the last clear coat I layed it on very light, hence the orange peel (OP), although I did 3 coats so I thought it would have built up better than it did

-Rubber duck/Hemi-Hampton/chrgerscott it took about 8 solid hours on the wet sanding and another 2 hours with the buffer. I'm sure an expert could have went faster though

-Oldrock I used PPG Omni line base/clear with Omni Consept clear, was pretty user friendly. I actually didn't use any primer or sealer (I'm sure the pro's are recoiling in horror ) the original paint was OK and the few areas I worked I used rattle can primer

- Quapman I'm the wrong guy to make gun suggestions but what I did do was use a test panel (71 trunk lid) to make sure the pattern and coverage was right before I short the actual vehicle. My problem was I shot the test panel, it looked good so I immediately moved on the the vehicle...had I waited 5 minutes or so I would have seen the clear run on the test panel and not shot the truck

- Mauve66 as far as OP in the base coat paint you could sand it and shoot it again...that's the nice thing about base/clear. In fact I had a few runs in the base coat (should have told me something) and I just sanded 'em and reshot it, can't tell. I'm guessing if you put clear over an OP base coat you could build up the clear real thick then wet sand the clear and have it act as a filler...might even make for a cool "shinny yet textured" appearance

- 72se Thanks for the kind words on the stright body, I like to think I have bodywork and priming down pretty good, painting is the next thing to master. You did hit one nail on the head, if the surface it super shinny and smooth it will show EVERYTHING, that's why I chose to accept a little bit or "texture" on the final product. The body is good but not perfect. If this was one of my Chargers and I spent more time on the body and I'd I'd invest another 6 hours or so to hit the entire vehicle again in 1000/1500/2000 and buff for it to be perfect...but this lil' truck doesn;'t warrent that much effort

[Silver R/T]

ya, that's the problem with cheap guns, they don't atomize well. You might as well spit it out of your mouth and it probably would lay out better lol
Good base/clear gun is the key. You can pick up used SATA Jet on ebay for like $50

[Silver R/T]

what if the orange peel is in the paint and not the clear??  how do you strip off all the clear and know that your down to the paint to start over with wet sanding the paint?
sorry to try and hijack

when you're wet sanding clear it has milky color to it....base, well it will be whichever color base it and you don't want to do that.

[72sechargerman]

Over the years I have fixed many not so good paint jobs with a good cut & rub I did a model A once and the owner walked right past it because the peal(texture) was gone! Thats when its fun not knowing how much paint is on the car

[quapman]

Well, I used a Divilbis StartingLine gun, don't recall the tip size. I asked a while ago in another post what the differences were between the StartingLine and FinishLine guns. I think I know now.

When I took the gun apart to clean it, I found metal chips inside from when the parts were machined ("C" shaped milling chips!). I'm hoping the FinishLine guns are of a better quality than that!