My other hobby

[GonzoBernelli]

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I detest orange peel in car paint! Since last Thursday I have slowly been eliminating it on the passenger side of my A5. Today I completed the passenger front quarter panel. It is a vast improvement ...

Steps"
- Wet sand using a 4" hard rubber sanding block wrapped with 2000 grit wet/dry Mirka sandpaper. Had to use a short block because of the body contours.

- Final sanding with 3M Trizact 5000 grit sandpaper using Rupes Duetto 5 inch polisher.

- Buff with heavy cut foam pad and Meguiars 105 heavy cut polish using Rupes Duetto 5 inch polisher

- Buff using Rupes medium cut polish and their medium cut pad.

- Buff using Rupes Diamond Extra fine compound and very soft finishing pad.

- Finally finished off with CarPro's Essence to seal the paint in the short term while wet sanding progresses over the rest of the car. When completely sanded out, car paint will receive CarPro's C-Quartz Ceramic coating, which is essentially glass (SiO2 goes on as a liquid and cures to SiO2). This finish is tree sap proof, bird dropping proof, insect juice proof.

 

[rick_reno]

Not sure what orange peel is or what it looks like, but that's a beautiful finish.

 

[GonzoBernelli]

Rick,
Put this phrase into your search engine of choice:

“Auto paint orange peel”

It will give you a much better description than I ever could

 

[Palouse]

“Auto paint orange peel” [/QUOTE

Think of it as the 5-O'clock shadow of auto paints rough like the surface of old dry orange peel!

 

[ijm5012]

Very nice Nick. I too enjoy car detailing, having various shelves of random orbital polishers, various polishing pads, buffing compounds and polishes, ceramic coatings, etc. It's a lot of work, but the results are worth it when you get that mirror-wet finish.

 

[rick_reno]

Looked it up. Must be common, they mentioned an “orange peel meter” that measures the degree of the peel. I’ve seen it based on the sample images provided, fortunately it can be remedied.

 

[GonzoBernelli]

Remedied, yes, BUT, not without some risk because if you cut through the clearcoat, it can become very expensive to respray color layer and multiple layers of clearcoat!! Fortunately for me, Audi clearcoat it like the armor on an Abrams M1.

It takes a very skilled body shop crew for body preparation (prep is EVERYTHING) and an artist of a painter to get to the "show car" look. That is reason a first class paint job is in the order of $12000.00 (probably more in today's world as the $12000 figure was from 10 years ago).

Proceed at your own risk.

As an aside, I've seen $250,000+ Lambos and other exotics with orange peel so bad it looks like the surface of the moon.

 

[rick_reno]

I knew a guy in college with a Lamborghini Miura, he painted it with Krylon rattle cans, he didn’t care what it looked as long as it went fast.

 

[MNglass]

. . .

As an aside, I've seen $250,000+ Lambos and other exotics with orange peel so bad it looks like the surface of the moon.

Nice finish on yours.
Would they keep those exotics that way to preserve the 'original' character?

 

[fredfordguy]

Nice job...orange peel may be the norm in concours class, but you can't beat a mirror like finish...Shot this one at a show in Lebanon Valley race track in NY

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....

 

[GonzoBernelli]

That is crazy good! I’m not at that level.

 

[Minuteman3]

I love your finish work ... well done. I do quite a bit of detailing and polishing, but not to that level!!

A few years ago, I had a 2003 Jaguar S-Type R that I often entered in Jaguar Club Concours events. Won a bunch of trophies for "Best in Class". Had virtually no "orange peel" from the factory. I've never seen such a good paint job on a mass produced vehicle. A couple of runs with some cleaner and waxes ant it just glistened!! Yet another reason I'm sad that I got rid of it!

Our cars get treated a couple of times a year. I'm looking at my truck as needing one, and that's a bit more of a project!!

Ken