Sanding Fresh 1K Clearcoat

William D.

William D.

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Hi all,

Hit a deer with my '83 Continental a few months back, and I've finally tracked down a header panel. I ordered all my paint stuff from paintscratch.com, and the clearcoat is a 1K clear.

I've got multiple coats on, but there's a lot of orange peel (all aerosol here). I want to sand it smooth and shiny, but I am afraid of going through the clear and wasting $150 in materials, and four hours of prepwork, if not more.

Should I start with 1000 or 1500 grit? Hand sanding would likely be best I think, lot of corners. Do I just sand this progressively until I'm done with the 2500 grit, then switch to UC and UP on a yellow/white pad with my DA?

I'm not expecting concours results here, but if I could make it match the rest of the car well, I'd be happy.

It says the clear dries in an hour, but I feel that is waaaaay too early to start sanding. I figured wait a couple weeks?


Sorry the photo is upside down, no idea why my iPhone does that.
 
Start with 2000 in a inconspicuous spot. Polish by hand with some compound to see what it will look like.
 
i would do wet 1000, then follow that with wet 1500, then follow that with wet 2000 then compound with wool pad sould get you very good results. post the after completion pics please, that will be cool
 
I wouldn't go anymore aggressive than 1500 grit. After 1500 I would go with 3000 grit as it makes the machine polishing process much easier to remove the sanding marks. If you can, perform as much sanding as possible via machine sanding. This will give you a much more uniform result and makes the subsequent sanding steps much easier.

The clear dries wishing one hour meaning it's not liquid/sticky anymore. You can instill fingerprints into the paint if you touch it after the one hour mark. Let it sit in place 24 hours. After that you can sand/polish without worry.

Do you have a Paint Thickness Gauge to measure what you are removing?
 
Their 1k Clear is junk

I found that it was not crystal clear, did not polish out like OEM CC and would temporarily water spot whenever it got wet.

If you haven't started yet....buy a better 2k clear
 
Hi all,

I got ahold of some sandpaper in the various grits.

However, I went out tonight to take a look at the header in my shop, and under the shop lighting, much to my surprise, the finish looks amazingly good. Yes, there are a few scratches you can see here and there from where I evidently didn't get them all before I primed, but for DIY, it looks far better than I would have expected. On the surfaces I checked with my LED lights, there is a nearly perfect (flat) reflection. The finish looks as good as the original paint, in terms of reflectivity. I can't believe it. Beautiful shine.

I'm going to take a look at it tomorrow in the sun, and if it looks as good as it did tonight, screw it, I'm not going to bother sanding it. It's not needed to match the rest of the car. I can't believe how well it laid flat.
 
Here it is everyone. It looked bad in the sun. Spent about 2.5 hours sanding by hand with 1500, 2000, 2500, then UC on a yellow pad with my DA. I had tried machine sanding, but I felt I couldn't get an accurate feel if how much I was taking off. So, I would sand a little, spray it with soapy water, and dry it off with my air chuck. Rinse and repeat until it was level. It honestly came out better than I could have possibly imagined.


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great to see the finished product, thank you for sharing
 
Just about done, waiting on a few parts from a friend in Texas now. It's a great match, the rest of the car has three months worth of dust on it, hence the slight difference. Pretty impressive, the paint still matches the original chip, nearly 35 years later.

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For anyone sanding,if you start sanding at 1500 grade and you want to finish off with 3000 ,flip your 1500 on the backside of paper and sand with the back of 1500 and you will have a 3000 grit finish with only one piece of 1500 grit.saves time money and compounding correction.
 
GSKR said:
For anyone sanding,if you start sanding at 1500 grade and you want to finish off with 3000 ,flip your 1500 on the backside of paper and sand with the back of 1500 and you will have a 3000 grit finish with only one piece of 1500 grit.

saves time money and compounding correction.
Click to expand...


Love you like a brother Jeff but I'm kind of skeptical of sanding with the back of a sheet of sandpaper and thinking it's the same as the actual side with the abrasives attached to the paper.


If it works for you that's great. Maybe next time you're here at Autogeek you can show me this technique on one of our black demo hoods.


:)
 
I was taught this by a old school Bodyshop instructor,I was blown away and used that method on a green triumph 2 months ago.will never forget it.
 
mike i give that a try at are next class when we wet sand on sunday... would that be ok :)
 
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