How to Wet Sand Orange Peel in Car Paint: Porsche 911

Hey guys, real quick, before the video starts, I want to reach out to you and remind you that we will have the new pivoting ammo bottle coming out very soon, but I need your help if you can go to the link below in the description and sign. For the Kickstarter campaign, we only have a few days left to help us fund the project and bring these triggers to market, so if you haven't already, go check it out as always. Thank you so much. for your support and enjoy the episode, what's up guys? In today's episode, we're working on this beautiful 1980 Porsche 911.

As you can see, there's a lot of

orange

peel

on the

paint

, so today we're going to talk about how that happens and how to remove it with my special guest jason rose from rupez usa ok first of all thanks for being here I know you flew we have a couple of cars to do and this is one of them a really important car it's covered completely in

orange

.

peel

so first explain what orange peel is and then how it occurs on a car that has been re

paint

ed that seems to look pretty good when you leave the cabin and then some time later it doesn't look as good as you.

I can surf these waves like they say, so there are bumps on the paint, that's what that orange peel is what happens with a repainted car like this, yeah the paint comes out of the gun wet, hits the surface and then , at some point it dries, so the solvent is the carrier for the solids, the solids are the paint, and the solvent carries the paint to the surface. What happens is that the solvent evaporates and the paint settles a little. Now, during that settling process, the paint might become textured. because it's literally shrinking nicely, so now that we've identified that it's orange peel, how do we get it out?

We're literally going to remove some paint so that the peaks and valleys that exist in the texture go. You have to remove the peaks, that's how you repair this, so it involves a little bit of

sand

ing and then a little bit of machine polishing, but first we're going to measure the thickness of the paint to understand the reference thickness we're dealing with and then after that. We're going to do a film disc

sand

ing procedure that will cut the peaks out of this texture, followed by a foam disc sanding procedure and then one or two machine polishing steps and then it should look flat like glass.

The first step is to wash the vehicle if necessary and in our case, since it is stored in a museum, it really does not need it, on the other hand, we do need to remove or break up any wax that may be on the surface and that could cause it to the sanding disc goes over the paint instead of on top of it to do this, Jason and I are using a 50 50 mix of isopropyl alcohol to remove any base layer of protection. Then we removed the badges, front entry, taped the trim, door handles and all the tight spots.

We then covered the wheels to prevent them from getting covered with sanding residue for the next two days. The first step is to dry sand with a 1500 grit film disc to even out the texture. Now this step can be done wet or dry depending on the type. of sandpaper you are using now, in our case step number one is dry because the disc we are using is designed to be used for dry sanding only, so make sure you pay attention to the particular disc you are using before continue. Further down the road let's keep in mind that there are two places where people tend to get into trouble with these film discs number one the discs are designed to remove layers of paint if we see orange peel that says on our new car and you want to remove it with a film disc, you can do it, but let's say in this scenario you remove it, it looks absolutely perfect, you are delighted that you have diluted the clear coat, compromising the integrity of the paint protection, so in theory, again.

If let's say six months later you have a scratch on your car and you want to remove it, you no longer have room to play, you have removed all or most of the clear coats, so keep that in mind, red flag number two is people tend to Choose a heavier grit than is actually needed to eliminate texture. This is where a proof point is absolutely critical. You should use the least aggressive step when leveling the texture, so think about what is the best gripping paper I can use to remove. the texture instead of just hitting it with a bazooka and leveling it, you will remove too much clear coat.

Okay, lastly, if you're watching this video and you want to sand your car, the truth is that there are many more reasons not to sand. your car than there are to do it, the reason we do it here is because this particular car was poorly repainted years ago and there is a ton of paint on the car, as you can see with our paint depth gauge, the most average factory paint job. It can range from three to six thousand and this one has a reading of 20 degrees on the odometer, so we have a lot of paint to sand and it makes it a perfect candidate for the job.

Well, all disclaimers aside, now is the time to get started. and because we have multiple people working, we can simultaneously sand three inches for edge work and sand six inches for flat, open spaces to set up the machines. We are using foam interface pads under the film discs to minimize excessive edge. By cutting out and minimizing pigtail marks during the leveling process, your goal here is to see the orange textured or peeling bright paint type turned into a flat appearance with white powder if you are dry sanding or white liquid if you are sanding on. wet. powder or liquid is the clear coat material that comes off the surface while sanding, after a few passes wipe off the residue and then inspect the paint to make sure the texture is removed, obviously if you haven't done so repeat the same step until I am satisfied with the leveling amount.

I know many of you will ask me, but it's a big challenge for me to tell you how many discs to use on a particular project because paint hardness obviously varies from car to car, so just pay attention when the disc reduces its sanding speed, that way you'll know you're cutting less, which creates less sanding waste, then when you see it's time to switch to a new one. packing another thing to keep in mind is what we call the sanding rule of thumb, this is where you leave a thumbnail sized space unsanded around all edges for safety before starting a project you need to ask yourself if this has to be perfect or just much better, is it a daily driver or is it flat for car shows?

Here's why properly sanding edges takes hours, even days longer, to complete a project to avoid burns or simply the tedious nature of working alone in tight spaces. In this case, it is daily. driven by the owner of Audrey and Museum, so we left thumbnail-sized space around the edges to avoid days of unnecessary work. Once we were done with the 1500, we used 2000 grit foam back discs to refine the previous step of the 1500 where the 1500 were placed. The disc focuses on sanding the tops of the orange peel, the foam back discs, the 2000 discs are designed to sand between peaks and valleys, contouring the paint and leaving a much more refined surface that prepares the paint for the next. compounding and polishing step now, unlike film discs which can be used dry or wet, foam backing discs of any brand are specifically designed to be used wet or what we call wet, in this case we use the spray bottle. we fill with water and give a light mist to the disc and the paint that's why we refer to it as wet and not necessarily wet like before you should also see a little bit of white liquid from the previous step because you are removing material again. just at a slower pace once you're done with the section you can really see the difference between the 1500 that's in the middle of the hood here that doesn't show any of the above lights and then the 2000 foam disc on the driver's side. side of the hood that begins to show a little of the outline of the lights as we approach a flat, reflective paint surface.

Well this is where it gets fun once all the paint has been leveled with 1500 and then refined with 2000 Grit it is now time to remove the remaining haze with Rupes 21 blue coarse compound and a wool pad blue on speed 4. Now the benefit of the 2000 grit foam disc in this whole process is that you can use a dual action buffer. to remove haze installed where in years past you actually had to use a wool pad composed of rotary polisher etc. to remove sanding marks from the finish after each section, be sure to blow on the pad and then apply two small dots to the The next area also use a three-inch pad and machine into tight spots as needed.

Then for the second step polishing, we used the white pad and a pure ultra finish polish. It is called pure because it leaves no solids or materials to prepare the paint for the protection phase, after doing the last refining step we protected the newly restored surface with reflex pro which made the paint pop completely before replacing the wipe the grill wipers, remove the tape, clean the windows, and add mud moisturizer to the tires and rubber trim. A quick way to gauge the clarity of the painting is to look at the words on a wall across the room, let's say while looking at the painting, in this case we looked at the ammo shield and read the words and they were almost perfect and the sharpness of the picture was noticeable after the job, well guys after two days the painting looks absolutely phenomenal, the difference between before and after is huge, hopefully the camera will catch it, you can really see it in the lights hexagrid and all the lights over here uh awesome so the summary here is we did 1500 2000 and then we used the new rupa system, compounding and polishing yeah absolutely crazy.

I'm going to do a couple different videos on that line of products and specifically the one behind us right there, a little sneak peek, uh, the glycenhaus boot, but really, uh, the only thing left to do is wear this back to the aldrine museum. Many thanks to them, by the way, for letting us work on this amazing car and there will be much more to come from them too, so be sure to check out their website, so all that's left to do is do what I said, let's get in the car and drive, we must make sure the paint is good.

After our little ride, the Audrey Museum team arrived to pick up the freshly sanded 911 for owner Nick. Now at the same time the remack came to the studio for some details and of course it started raining so I put 911 on the trailer. without getting it wet would be the next challenge so we moved the trailer as close to the door as we could and Jason dressed like he was in the witness protection program along with my neighbor's dad Steve and I held up pieces of plastic to protect It rained on the Porsche as we pushed it in but of course there was a problem, oh Jason, go ahead, dripping, I got it, I'll give you a job, this is your walk of shame, look at the drippers, go ahead, give it a job to the man, give the guy under the job, see? we had it perfect and everything was being channeled with the 911 all packed up we arrived in rhode island to present the restoration to nick wow his tails never look like that it's amazing everything looks better than new to see my full interview with nick and the car by car tour Subscribe to ammo studio channel to see more behind the scenes images