Orange Peel

[scottmoyer]

be a PDR tech and you'll find that orange peel becomes very easy to see. In PDR, you learn to look for highs and lows in the paint, and you lift the lows and tap down the highs. Some orange peel is actually there to hide imperfections in the panel stampings. Much like textured walls or textured ceilings, the texture hides waves in the panel.

I have also been involved with show cars for years and anybody saying the orange peel is worse today than older cars is incorrect. Some cars are smoother than others, but my 1987 IROC-Z has heavy orange peel on a factory paint job from Van Nuys, CA. Every manufacturer plant will produce different quality finishes, so the issue has been around for decades with some finishes smoother than others.

 

[GMetal]

Factory clear coat is very thin. Only a few mils thick. Think about a sheet or two of paper. Less clear is less UV protection. Cut that clear off and your paint will fail prematurely. I've seen Ferraris with terrible orange peel. When we paint high end paint jobs with mirror flat finishes it requires a two step clear coat process. Vehicle gets cleared. Allowed to dry and then sanded flat with a block and 600P grit paper. Then the whole thing is clear coated again with a flow clear or slightly over-reduced clear. Then after drying its block sanded with 1200p to 3000p grit before being buffed out. Ive seen many cars where they sand the clear off and they end up buffing the base coat then hide the whole screw up with a wax. Be careful trying to get perfect paint with a high production vehicle by companies focused on cutting costs. If you want to really scrutinize paint use a LED flash light after stripping the surface with 90% alcohol.