Mike Phillips
Active member
- Dec 5, 2022
- 51,004
- 7
Bodyshop sanding technique when using clay mitts to decontaminate paint during the washing step
Here's an old body shop technique I used while washing this old 2-door Dodge that I thought I would share...
Part of the reason I had to wash the car was the vinyl top was filthy with years of built-up dirt embedded into the grain of the vinyl. Also the tires had a real junky tire dressing on them that was just a gooey mess. Besides that, the paint felt rough when I did the Baggie Test so I needed to clay the paint before machine buffing.
Normally I don't wash classic car or muscle cars as a professional courtesy to the owner. In this case, the owner says he drives this car in the rain. It rains a lot in Florida, and I guess this would be his "Rain Car" as compared to the rest of his muscle car collection, which he doesn't drive in the rain. So I figure if he drives this car in the rain then I'm not going to cause any harm by washing it. So I washed it to tackle 4 things at one time.
1: Clean the wheels and tires.
2: Clean the vinyl top.
3: Clean the car.
4: Chemically and mechanically decontaminate the paint.
That brings me to this old school body shop technique. Normally I use a foam gun when I want to use a clay mitt or clay towel to mechanically decontaminate paint. This time though, because I already had a bucket mixed up with the new coating wash I wasn't using a foam gun.
So AFTER washing and rinsing off the car I dipped my wash mitt into the sudsy soap and then squeezed it onto body panels and then used the soap water run-off as my lubricant for the clay mitt.
Like this,
At a body shop, technicians do something similar when sanding guide coats or even wetsanding orange peel after the car is painted. They usually stick a rag into a bucket of soapy water and squeeze it over a vertical panel as they sand and the water running down the panel acts to lubricate the surface and flush away paint that has been sanded off.
Normally I use a foam gun but this technique works too....
Here's an old body shop technique I used while washing this old 2-door Dodge that I thought I would share...
Part of the reason I had to wash the car was the vinyl top was filthy with years of built-up dirt embedded into the grain of the vinyl. Also the tires had a real junky tire dressing on them that was just a gooey mess. Besides that, the paint felt rough when I did the Baggie Test so I needed to clay the paint before machine buffing.
Normally I don't wash classic car or muscle cars as a professional courtesy to the owner. In this case, the owner says he drives this car in the rain. It rains a lot in Florida, and I guess this would be his "Rain Car" as compared to the rest of his muscle car collection, which he doesn't drive in the rain. So I figure if he drives this car in the rain then I'm not going to cause any harm by washing it. So I washed it to tackle 4 things at one time.
1: Clean the wheels and tires.
2: Clean the vinyl top.
3: Clean the car.
4: Chemically and mechanically decontaminate the paint.
That brings me to this old school body shop technique. Normally I use a foam gun when I want to use a clay mitt or clay towel to mechanically decontaminate paint. This time though, because I already had a bucket mixed up with the new coating wash I wasn't using a foam gun.
So AFTER washing and rinsing off the car I dipped my wash mitt into the sudsy soap and then squeezed it onto body panels and then used the soap water run-off as my lubricant for the clay mitt.
Like this,
At a body shop, technicians do something similar when sanding guide coats or even wetsanding orange peel after the car is painted. They usually stick a rag into a bucket of soapy water and squeeze it over a vertical panel as they sand and the water running down the panel acts to lubricate the surface and flush away paint that has been sanded off.
Normally I use a foam gun but this technique works too....
