Purchased some sanding discs to use with a d/a polisher and had a training session with my camaro. Car has severe water etching that has been there for years...polishing won't touch them at all. I can't afford a meter that breaks down the individual layers of paint but this was the avg across the whole hood. Car was repainted roughly 10 years ago (4 years before I bought it)..base/clear setup...i believe all of these 80s camaros had single stage from the factory. I could be wrong. I have these in 3in size and the same in 6in size. I used the 3in for small test sections and 6in to do the majority of the work. I would have loved to remove the louvres but the mounting tabs are very brittle...one is already broken. Only working on one half of the hood to hopefully have a dramatic 50/50. Tested with just 3000 but not enough on this very hard paint, so I did two stage 1500/3000. I reckon 3000 grit will be great for softer paints that require sanding. Rupes LHR21 polisher, MF cutting pad. I experimented and found a mix of M100 and FG400 gave me a bit more work time than M100 alone. Flash was on and made it look brighter than it really was, trust there was zero reflection at all after sanding. Final polishing done with Menzerna SI1500 green foam pad and SF4500 blue pad. Clean up time Gave it a quick touchless wash. I would have done a full wash but the roads are still salty and daylight was dropping fast. Letting the foam dwell and rinisingwit the pressure washer was enough to clean all of the sanding and polishing mess. 50/50's, big difference in clarity of reflection Upclose Under the lights I'd grade myself a B+. Corrected side is still not perfect. I reckon I need to downgrade and try 1200 grit to get more spots out that are visible when you put your face extremely close. Still feel like I didn't do a good job but the technique is there. also doing this uncovered some defects from the bodyshop repaint I couldn't fix. Thanks for viewing!
That's a noticeable improvement. IMO, I wouldn't try to chase it anymore. You don't have the meter that breaks down the layers like you mentioned. I treat wet sanding with respect. It's not hard, but you can mess up things really fast. Great work!!
I agree, great job and don't push it. I always find that when I go that extra extra step I mess it up............lol
I agree... wetsanding isn't the hard part, it's remembering that it's not like polishing. Knowing when "good enough" is the BEST you're gonna get, sure beats "well, now I need a paint job." I've chased a lot of scratches that didn't end well for me. Luckily, they were all on my own cars and I was "experimenting".
Absolutely Beautiful Work !!! What a great improvement !! Did you measure before and after the all the sanding was done ? How much of the 243 microns was left after the sanding? While we know the Highline is not 100% accurate, it should have been able to measure a big change.. Dan F
