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Originally Posted by cmitchell17
If the paint was in fact thicker, would wet sanding actually be the only thing that could get the microscratches out. My car has unfortunately been extremely abused (unfortunately by me) by making it go through car washes with evil spinney things since I didn't have anywhere to take care of it. So yeah all my fault for being the one to cause the 5k worth of paint damage from the car wash and the fact that I bought it new and could have prevented it but instead have taken 15k in depreciation haha.
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Wet sanding is most often used to get rid of orange peel after an aftermarket paint job. aftermarket clear is way thicker than oem clear. if you really know what you are doing, you can go after deeper scratches with wet sanding as this allows you to focus on just the scratch and not hit the entire panel with an aggressive compound. after wet sanding though you will definitely want to compound/polish as the wet sanding alone will make your paint look cloudy/dull.
you dont want to wet sand oem paint over the whole car. modern car paint is 2 mils thick. a post it note is 3 mils thick. if you are going after a scratch here and there it is one thing, but if you are wet sanding entire panels, you will end up burning through the clear before the life expectancy of the paint runs out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fiyero88
Nope not scary, I wet sand mine regularly, just took a scratch out with some. Also took some paint chip marks out by wet sanding. It's very simple to wet sand but you can over sand. I honestly don't think the paints as thin as everyone claims because I literally just did a area for probably over a minute of sanding and it got the scratch out but didn't bother the clearcoat or go too deep. I don't want to say this because I love my camaro but the OEM paint is absolute trash, the worse I've ever seen personally in a vehicle.
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just a polish or a compound if needed, will help drastically with how bad the scratch, etc looks. if you chase each and every panel with an aggressive correction (especially wet sand) too often, you may end up with failing paint way sooner than needed. a very light polish will drastically improve how visible a scratch is though.
The recommendation is to use the least aggressive correction to maximize your clear life. if you are good with washing technique, you should be fine with a minor polish every year or two, no need for aggressive compounding, if your wash technique is good.
definitely ditch the cover. you are not just scratching it while putting it on... if the car is outside, any cover movement caused by the wind will wear your clear pretty quickly over time. look at what clear bras or those other front end protection covers do. and those don't move as much as a cover can.