clear coat

why is clear coat so thin? whats a fella to do when its necessary to fill a chip and make the repair nearly perfect? it seems like this is a little easier on cars ten years or older.

you can thicken the paint up using Optimum Opti Coat or GLARE Infinity.
Besides that, Use Zero to feather in the chip repair.

I don't think there is an electronic paint thickness gauge any of us can afford that would give a reading of additional film build by the Optimum product or any other "wax/sealant".
Suggest you contact the owner/chemist of Optimum to substansiate your post.
Ketch

Is there any way to rebuild damaged clear coat without reapplying clear coat? Am I to understand that if I use this Optimum system that I could repair clear coat damaged from deep scratching?

According to the automotive paint manufacturers, their customers, (the vehicle manufacturers), one should never remove more than 3/10th of a mil of OEM clearcoat when doing scratch or etching repairs.

The reason for this is that the average 1K clear is 2 to 2.5 mil in thickness when cured.

This film of clear is more dense in the top .5 mil of the clearcoat film build, and is where the majority of the very important UV blockers are concentrated.

Remove the UV blockers and the dense portion of the clearcoat and premature failure of the clearcoat will usually be the result.

The time for this to take place varies dependant upon the the enviorment the vehicle is subjected to, IE, high ozone areas, high UV exporsure (Flordia/So.California, etc) as well as those vehicles which spend their time around industrial producing areas with higher concentrates of air pollutants.

Ketch

Good points Ketch. I have long pointed out to detailers that we train or come in contact with that the OEM clear-coat being only 1.5 mils (mil being athousandth of an inch) that they are not applied to be "wet or dry" sanded.

Aftermarket painting at a body shop when the painter knows they are going to sand after application will apply at least 2.5 to 2.75 mils of clear to allow for the sanding and subsequent buffing.

Would you agree?

Bud A

Yes, plus the "chemistry" of the refinish paint material is much different than the chemistry of OEM material.

Different catalists, different method of curing, solvent carrier system is much different,the resulting film build has a different density in it's levels, and so forth.

Does that apply to hand-painted cars, eg Lamborghini, Ferrari?

I mean the part about the UV blockers being near the top of the coat.

I get asked about wet-sanding BMW a lot. I don't like to do it, but the cars here in Europe are all coming out of production with bad orange peel. I don't like to wet-sand original paint in case something arises with warranty conditions.

Not sure on the Italian exotics, however have seen film of the Ferrari assembly process and it showed the use of the auto-bells to apply, which would indicate the same type of chemistry others use.

Lot of reasons for OEM "orange peel", and most is due to the required use of enviormentally friendly paint systems and the required solvent system.

The solvent system for clears is actually a blend of at least 3 different solvents, with different flash points, the last to go out is the "tailing solvent", which aids in creating a smooth top finish.

In Europe and some other parts of the world, regulations have caused the manufacturer to reduce or eliminate this "tailing solvent" in order to meet air quality regulations.


They try to make up for this by changing the heat curing cycle, but does not always work.

You may have noticed that some brands have certain models that exhibit less orange peel, etc than other models.

This normally due to their being assembled in a different plant, with a different paint kitchen for the vehicles.

In my opinion, if you chose to do a "color sand" of any new vehicle, have a quality eletronic thickness gauge, take readings and try to not remove more than .3 (3/10) of a mil of the clear.

Doing so will leave aprox .2 to .4 mil of the dense portion of the clear, where the UV blockers concentrate.

Ketch

Profile

Where do you get the idea that Lamborghini cars are hand painted? Do you mean that they are hand-sprayed vs using robotic assembly-line sprayers?

Can't see that this would make any difference in the final product on the vehicle. Maybe less orange peel.

Ketch is more qualified to comment on this subject than I.

Regards

Bud, sorry - yes that's what I meant. Hand-sprayed. Like the Aston Martin plant do with the soft Dupont paint. Its all sprayed and finished by technicians. Fairly thickly applied as well since they do a better job of sanding the paint than the production-line operations.

I really try to avoid sanding factory finishes. I have a lot of experience with body-shop finishing (lots of people who paid for cheap spray jobs then have to pay me to sand and polish it properly).

You probably don't remember me, Ketch. I got a few pallets of product from you about 8 yrs ago. I still have your process charts on the wall of my work-shop and learned a lot from you when I was a member of Delphi Mobile Detailers forum! I'm in Ireland. Still using your cross-hatch polishing technique most of the time! Personally, I'm grateful for all the contributions that you and Bud have made. Even though sometimes it is a little biased to your own brands! Can't blame you for that though!! : )