Wet Sanding

[JohnnyC]

Hi all,

Over the past 2 years or so, the paint on the hood and roof has noticably faded to a gray haze and swirl marks. I am unable to remove with polishing and waxing on my own.

A coworker suggested i try his friend, he looked at it and gave me an est of $150-180 to detail and polish up, etc. So i agree. I get a call from him later on in the day after my car is already at his shop, "you need this entire car to be wet sanded. Gonna run $450-500, looking at about 2 days". He did 1/2 of the passenger side door, and he stopped and returned the car to me. You can really see the difference. Orange peel gone, deep black. It looked great! This was with 1200 grit paper.

Is this a far estimate? He also had his body shop quote me at $2,500 for an entire paint job which seems low to me. I got another estimate 2-3 years ago at $6-7,000. So, i told him i would get back to him about the wet sand. And with NJ winter just 3 months away, i'm not sure if it is worth it.

Any experiences or comments with this situation would really be helpful.

John

[sleepyhead]

It sounds a tad steep to me. I just got 2 estimates last week for a complete wet sand and polish for my wife's 4 door 2002 Blazer and it came to $325 and $350...and that's more surface area than your corvette.

So I'm not sure if you're getting a fair price or not.

[Aurora40]

Hey, just an FYI, but the reason the orange peel is gone is that much of the clearcoat is gone. Did the guy use a paint thickness gauge before he sanded away at your door? How do you know how much paint was removed?

Wetsanding is not something to be taken lightly, especially with 1200 grit paper. Most factory cars are not painted with enough clear to be sanded down as they will not be sanded down (and you can't just leave an extra thick clear on there). Typically a car that will be wetsanded is painted with more paint in expectation of the removal.

It's possible to sand the clear down without breaking through it such that the paint looks awesome. But there won't be enough clear to provide adequate UV protection, and within months to a year or more, the clearcoat will fail. I'd be very skeptical of anyone that just decided to up and wetsand your paint, especially if he didn't ask you a lot of questions about it first (is it a repaint, have you ever machine buffed it, did you own it new, etc).

Also, it's almost always possible to wetsand out any imperfections like swirls, scratches, staining, etc. But that doesn't mean you should wetsand them out. It all depends on how deep they are and how much paint is left. I'm no expert on wetsanding, but I do have two cents worth of info on it, and there it is.