Non-BMW Stuff on a BMW Forum
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It is so scary to start sanding on paint.
It was an uneasy feeling at first, definitely. But it has three coats of clear on it which gives me a nice layer to work with and some reassurance I'm not going to mess it up.
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It was an uneasy feeling at first, definitely. But it has three coats of clear on it which gives me a nice layer to work with and some reassurance I'm not going to mess it up.
I am watching and learning. I painted a hood and bumper cover for my van but did not do any finishing, I would like to clean it up a little because it has some orange peel and spots that feel rough like you mentioned. Thanks for the walk through.
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I am watching and learning. I painted a hood and bumper cover for my van but did not do any finishing, I would like to clean it up a little because it has some orange peel and spots that feel rough like you mentioned. Thanks for the walk through.
I really didn't want to wetsand. I had already spent so much time getting to the point of painting, that I was burnt out on it. But I was convinced to do it and after I started I'm really glad I did. Wetsanding showed me how many imperfections the clear coat had that you really can't see. When I'm all done I'll put together my overall thoughts on the whole project and what'd I'd do differently.
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Alright. Moving right along. The whole car has 1500. The hood, trunk, and sunroof panel have 2000.
it’s pretty cool that even though these are super hazy straight on, at an angle you can start to see the gloss coming back and the reflection get cleaner.
Discovered that someone has messed with the sunroof panel in the past. The front most screw was missing on the driver side and the front most screw on the passenger side was nearly stripped. If you’re going to go in and start something - finish it.
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OK. Here's a doozy of a post.
Over the last couple nights I got the driveshaft, axles, and exhaust back in. I have some parts coming to bleed the brakes and hopefully get it back on the ground.
I ordered the Chemical Guys DA and the 4oz bottles of their compound and polish lineup with their orange, white, and black pads.
I did some testing last night to get a feel for the products and what my process might look like on the PS fender. Off the bat it was clear the DA wasn't going to cut it to remove the sanding marks. I knew this could go both ways - some people have good luck with a DA but the pros say you need to use a rotary. This is my test piece using the rotary with the CG orange pad with V32, then the DA orange pad with V34, V36, and V38.
The fender ended up like this only using the DA with the above group of products:
While it's not terrible, it's still very dull. I took out my rotary, which needs a 6.5" pad and the CG pads are 5.5", but I put on the orange cutting pad just as an experiment on the trunk lid. Then ran through all the CG products with the DA. V32 and V34 on the orange pad, V36 on the white pad, and V38 on the black pad.
The results were much better.
But I still wasn't happy. There were were lots of sanding marks still visible.
I did some more reading and have read lots of good things about the Meguiars M105 and M205 combination for cutting and polishing after sanding. I have also read a few instances where people compare the V32 vs the M105 and have said that the V32 didn't do a thing but the M105 had great results. I will also be picking up a wool cutting pad for the rotary. I found a very thorough walk through for polishing after sanding and my new process is going to go:
- Cutting with wool pad on rotary and M105
- Polishing with Orange Griots pad on rotary with M205
- Polishing with DA white pad with M205
- Sealing with something or the other
The CG products aren't bad. And I could see the V36 and V38 working much better when they had a good base to do their job. I will save these for future cars that don't need such a severe paint correction. I also have three coats of clear on the car, so I am not worried about the cutting power of the wool pad.
I am taking everything step by step and it's all a huge learning curve to me. I've never painted a car, I've never had to correct clear coat after being wetsanded, etc. I think it all comes down to finding the rights tools and products for what I was doing and how I was doing it.
My greatest takeaways from this whole thing:
- It will be a long time before I paint a car again, but I am no longer fearful of a project car that has bad paint. If I were to paint a car again, I would do some things differently:
- More time prepping the garage. Securing plastic along the walls better or even building makeshift walls so you could still walk along the edges of the garage.
- A better venting system. I ended up getting two more box fans for a total of 5. This helped a lot. But you still couldn't' control the air coming in at the top of the garage door when it's cracked open and there may or may not be a couple bugs fossilized in paint.
- I would never do this in winter again. It was difficult to battle the temps. I would heat the garage up for a day to warm up the metal and the air, but as soon as you opened the door the temps would drop. Made it hard to control your environment.
- I would find some panels to practice on. I wasted a lot of paint on the trunk and hood getting the hang of spraying metallic paint and I wasted a lot of primer by not setting up my gun properly.
- I would spend more time sanding and would have done a urethane primer over the polyester primer.
- Sometimes I get annoyed and frustrated that it seems like things aren't working out how the internet says it's supposed to, but I have to remember that this is my first time doing it, and I'm learning as I go. Not having Amazon has made this more difficult because it's harder to find things locally/not wanting to go inside stores.
I'm getting there. The car is coming back together. I believe I found everything I need to cut/polish the car locally. I realized that my time to finish the car is dwindling - we move June 6th to our apartment and I would like to have the car done well before then to make sure there aren't little issues.
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For what it’s worth I used the M105/M205 combo on the e30 and portions of the e34 with just foam pads and was pretty pleased with the results. I was not very aggressive with either car but results were good enough for me, which is to say that I didn’t take the really deep scratches out but swirls and lighter marks were completely gone, even using a DA. I might have to try the two-pad polishIng step this summer, gloss was good but I wonder if there’s room for improvement?
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Have you used a rotary before? I don't know if I read anything in this post alluding to that. Your process will be the same as using the DA, you just have to be more aware of your product to pad ratio and your duration of your stroke to get the amount of cut you want without taking too much off. Because it's new paint, it should be a little more forgiving as you have more material to work with. Just be careful on edges as there's no safety features and you'll burn the paint off pretty quickly if you hover on them.
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For what it’s worth I used the M105/M205 combo on the e30 and portions of the e34 with just foam pads and was pretty pleased with the results. I was not very aggressive with either car but results were good enough for me, which is to say that I didn’t take the really deep scratches out but swirls and lighter marks were completely gone, even using a DA. I might have to try the two-pad polishIng step this summer, gloss was good but I wonder if there’s room for improvement?
That's good to hear! The rotary and especially the wool pad provide much more cut so I assume there would be gains from doing it that way?
Have you used a rotary before? I don't know if I read anything in this post alluding to that. Your process will be the same as using the DA, you just have to be more aware of your product to pad ratio and your duration of your stroke to get the amount of cut you want without taking too much off. Because it's new paint, it should be a little more forgiving as you have more material to work with. Just be careful on edges as there's no safety features and you'll burn the paint off pretty quickly if you hover on them.
Yes. This is actually the first time I've ever used a DA. I've only used my rotary for all my car polishing since forever all the times.
I'll be staying away from the edges with the rotary. I've actually read that people will tape off edges and corners and is likely what I'll do for some added safety. And then go back over the edges with the foam pad.
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That's good to hear! The rotary and especially the wool pad provide much more cut so I assume there would be gains from doing it that way?
That's what I've heard, yeah. I'm planning on grabbing a few wool pads for the really nasty bits on the e30 and for the first pass on the e34. It's black, which doesn't help but it honestly looks like someone used a pumice stone to wash it. So much haze!
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The wool pad and Meguiars products made a big difference. Here is the fender with the first attempt and CG products:
And with the wool cutting pad and Meguiars.
Now that I have a process down and these products seem to be working I can finally start going after the whole car.
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Looking awesome! I wish I had the patience to do paint/bodywork stuff. It’s truly an art
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Looking awesome! I wish I had the patience to do paint/bodywork stuff. It’s truly an art
Thank you!
And I agree with you 100%. People on the internet make it look so easy. This is where I got my method from for cutting/polishing/buffing the car:
It's a very, very thorough walk-through on the process of sanding to final finish. I can't imagine how many hours went into that project, but it's amazing what the end result it.
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Looks good! Never noticed it before, did you go body color on the front bumper lip and rockers?
Thank you!
And yes. I did body color on the rockers and front bumper lip. I'm going to see how it looks with just the bumper and door trims being the accents. I wouldn't be surprised if I paint the bumper lip back to black eventually.
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It’s on the ground. Last night I started it up and bled the cooling system. Have PS rear window trim to put back on, a piece of door moulding, and the trunk panels.
Interior cleaned up and looking oh so good.
The WI Bimmers sticker that will live on as part of the car.
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