Client expectations on paint correction?

C

cleantechwa

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I did a 2013 BMW 5 series that was beat up and scratched the freak out. I did two step process and got rid of all the scratches and coated with black fire pro. The car is pulled out and the client says nice all scratches are gone. But he looks at them in the sun from angle and says I thought all if these will be filled and I can’t see of them?

I educated and said well with buffing and correction it only correct surface but wont go in and fill the scratches, you will see them but they are not visible until at an angle or great light.

Am I Wrong? He was huff and puffing…I am second guessing!!!
 
Would need to see original damage and after pics.

Also how aggressive you went at it.
 
The concern is with scratches that bad/deep is that if you try to get all the scratches out, you’d reduce the thickness of the clearcoat, which reduces the protection on the paint. What you can try is get a filler glaze and then put a sealant over that. I really wonder about a client that brings beat up paint and expects perfection.
 
It’s not clear to me what you said to him before you started this project. When I have a car that basically is pretty trashed out and somebody wants me to help, I usually do a spot or a 2 x 2 section so he can see the end result. I like to set up customer expectations early so I don’t have a problem later.
 
glen e said:
It’s not clear to me what you said to him before you started this project. When I have a car that basically is pretty trashed out and somebody wants me to help, I usually do a spot or a 2 x 2 section so he can see the end result. I like to set up customer expectations early so I don’t have a problem later.
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I mentioned i will remove all the surface scratches that didnt go into clear coat or into the car body. I didnt say i would make them disappear though :-) thats like get a fresh paint coat, yeh?
 
dgage said:
The concern is with scratches that bad/deep is that if you try to get all the scratches out, you’d reduce the thickness of the clearcoat, which reduces the protection on the paint. What you can try is get a filler glaze and then put a sealant over that. I really wonder about a client that brings beat up paint and expects perfection.
Click to expand...

yeh but thats like 3 day job :-) but they dont want to pay for 3 day work. Good suggestion though, i might try this on my own car!
 
Ok so... polishing and scratches....

The job of the compound is to remove minor scratches and swirls. If you have scratches that are visible to the eye from a distance, you need to wet sand them off.

I always have that discussion with my clients because most people believe the compound will remove all the scratches... and if you want to do that you will need to use a rotary polisher and remove way too much paint from the car.

So for me, I always suggest a single step of polishing to remove the micro scratches and oxidation, and if there are visible scratches, I offer to wet sand them off first.

If you decide to go after deep scratches, make sure to buy a paint depth gage. Anything under 100 microns you have to be very careful about... That is about 4 mils. Many cars come with 50-70 microns of paint now a days and on those, I would not wet sand, and I would not do any heavy compounding either.

Removing scratches can easilly remove 20-30 microns if the scratch is really deep, and the ones that are not usually will require to remove about 10 microns of paint.

So if you have 60 microns of paint, usually half of that is the clear and the rest is the base coat and primer. 30 microns is already too thin IMO, manufacturers used to recommend having at the very least 50 microns of clear on the car. So removing any of it is a really bad idea.

You will find that some brands have thinner paints than others. Nissan and Hyundai comes to mind. When someone asks me over the phone to remove scratches on these 2 brands I always tell them it is very likelly I won't be able to.

On the other hand, brands like Jeep usually put extra paint on their vehicles because they expect people to go off road with them.

Experience will help you a lot.
 
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