Unpopular opinion: that 2018 Silverado I painted came out better before I wet sanded it

Ngl, I spent 3 hours wet sanding a 2018 Chevy Silverado in Tauranga last month and the gloss actually looked worse than the orange peel I started with, has anyone else found that factory clear coats don't respond to sanding like older paint jobs do?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_tessa23d ago

Honestly, you're saying it actually looked worse after wet sanding? Like, did you get that weird cloudy haze or was it more like you burned through the clear in spots? I keep hearing people swear by wet sanding for fixing orange peel but my own experience with newer factory clears is they're so thin you barely have any room to work before you're into the base coat.

tylerpark23d ago

Yeah that cloudy haze is exactly what I'm talking about. You hit the nail on the head with thin factory clears. I tried wet sanding a 2019 Honda Civic to smooth out some bad orange peel on the hood. Went super careful with 3000 grit and it just turned into this milky mess that wouldn't buff out. I think these newer paints are cured differently too, almost like the clear is baked on so hard that the sanding scratches just sit on top instead of blending in. My old 2005 Mustang you could basically wet sand with 2000 grit and compound it back to glass no problem. Nowadays I just live with orange peel or pay a shop to do a full respray because the margin for error is basically zero.

kim_johnson5123d ago

Nah I gotta push back a little here. I've wet sanded a bunch of newer cars including a 2021 Toyota Corolla and a 2020 Kia Forte and it came out fine. The trick is you can't just go at it with 3000 grit and call it a day. You gotta step up through 5000 then 8000 grit before you even touch a compound. And even then you need a good cutting compound not some all-in-one junk. I think people skip the finer grits because they get impatient and that's where the haze comes from. The clear is definitely thinner now though that I agree on. But if you measure it with a gauge first and know where you're at you can still fix orange peel without burning through. I've done it more times than I can count.