jg,

One thing to remember, do NOT wet sand your base coat if you are using a base/clear coat system and you have a metallic or pearl type of paint. You will not like the result.....

Solid color paint might be OK but I have never sanded the color coat, just the clear topcoat.

Buffing is best done with a rotary (if you know how to use them) or a random orbital like Porter Cable 7424. You can buff out 1200 grit wet sanding marks with a good wool or foam pad and Meg's 105 on something like the Makita 9227 rotary that I use. Going to 1500 grit paper and you can get them with Menz SIP, IP or similar on a rotary. With 2000 grit, you can use a PC or Rotary and IP or SIP as a polish.

When you have the paint polished down to a light gloss from the heavy polish or compounding step, use a polishing pad and some like Menz Micro or Nano or 3M UltraFina final polish to get a nice shiny gloss to your paint.

Edit: The reason you should not sand your base coat is that most paint systems just need to flash before the next coat is put down. If you wait much more than 30 minutes or so (depending upon the paint) for the next coat, you have to wait 24 to 48 hours (again, depending on the paint) before the next coat can be applied. If you fail to do this correctly, you can have a clear coat failure as it will not adhere correctly to the base (color) coat. I'm sure that you have seen cars where part of the clear is just "bubbling" away from the base coat. That is usually the fault of the painter by not following the recomended procedure from the paint company.

 

Yup.

The only time I could see the need to sand the color coat is if you did a really bad job painting and it was horribly uneven or rigged. I totally agree sanding a metallic color would be quite bad. After all, doing this type of repair will not result in a perfect but instead near perfect to good enough finish. If you want perfect, gotta go to a shop. Personally, I wan to prevent rust and keep the color the same. At least black is good for color match! White should hide a lot too. I will probably always stick with a solid color paint (non-metallic).

My bottle of paint reads as follows:
"Apply this coat in one direction. Let dry 30 minutes before applying additional coat. Apply clearcoat after 24 hours."

My bottle of clear coat reads as follows:
"Apply thin coat in one direction. Let dry 30 minutes before applying additional coat. Apply clearcoat only after 24 hours."

Thanks for chiming in GeorgiaHybrid....I was hoping you would

 

The paint I got seemed to be an exact match. I got the spray can. Found the touchup bottle with the brush at Walmart.

 

Michael,

At least with modern cars we don't have to worry about the bumper cover rusting... I had one local guy that was worried sick about the rust that would happen in the scratch on his "bumper"

 

Amen. If I have to get a scratch, I'd like it to be on the bumper.

 

As usual, the advice you all have given me is great. The steps for doing the job right, however, are well above my comfort zone. Perhaps I will simply apply the touch-up paint, let it dry, apply the clear-coat and hope for the best.

 

Absolutely nothing wrong with that at all! That is exactly what I did up until this fall when I decided to take the next step because you could see the scratch quite well. With white, it will probably blend in nicely. Black can be a pain at times, although still easier in this respect than a metallic paint. Solid colors are the way to go!

It will come out beautiful! Lets hope the weather in NY stays warm so we can both do some car work this weekend.

 

jg013c,

This guide might help you for the smaller nicks and chips as well as the larger ones. This guy uses different polishes than I do but most of his techniques are the same.

http://www.guidetodetailing.com/arti...p?articleId=27