I am the 2nd owner of a 04' PW/PW and it appears that the previous owner has used some mother of pearl nailpolish or something similar to cover some chipping in the front of the bonnet and bumper. For one, the color doesn't match, for two, the paint is "textured" and lumpy. It's like little blobs of paint that don't even cover the blemishes.

Now I have heard of the "wet-sanding" method, although I am unsure as to the proper procedure, what matierials needed, and preperation.

I know that I can order a paint pen that will cover the "normal" chipping, however, these will need to have the paint/polish/whateverthehellitis removed from it prior to finishing.

Any suggestions, or can someone out there explain the wet-sand method as it would pertain to this particular situation?

Cead Mille Failte!!!

 

Calling Octaneguy or kenchan... Your help is needed...


Art

 

You're going to need to wet sand or use a rotary buffer on those. An orbital won't do much in my experience.

I won't dare attempt to learn how to use a rotary on my car.

 

I would try some Langka before I took sandpaper or any kind of buffer to it. You can get Langka at most auto type stores.

Mark

 

Yep I've seen this before and no, you don't want to wetsand or rotary polish your paint to fix this. What you want to do is hire a pro to atleast get it into the point where you could begin to work on it yourself.

That pro would probably be a body shop. There are various solvents that won't hurt your paint, but will remove touchup. We used a media reducer recently to get rid of some graffiti spray paint over a new car, that worked great.

The Langka product may work well to remove the blobs as well. I use this solvent to remove paint more than using it how it's sold which is to minimize the blob spots during touch up.

Once the paint is removed, we can talk about how to go about doing proper touch up.

Btw, wetsanding or color sanding is just a method of using a fine grit sandpaper--usually 1500 grit or finer to smooth down the paint. I go as fine as 3000 grit for touchups, though 2000 or 2500 is usually needed for the earliest stages of touchup repair. When sanding the paint, you want to mask off the surrounding areas so you don't unintentionally sand them. You then need to flood the surface with water--from a sponge or towel constantly as you sand. Sounds easy but what's the worst that can happen?

1.) Sand through the clear coat (possibly because someone else tried a repair already that you don't know about--so the paint is already thin--or you just sanded too much)
2.) Cause tracers and gouges in the paint by sanding with clogged up papers. Then you have to buff out these gouges.
3.) When you sand the paint--it gets fogged up. You are removing and abrading the paint. You will need to remove more when you buff, so when you sand, you want to leave enough paint that it can be polished out.
4.) Wetsanding isn't for beginners. The worst that can happen is you need to repaint the area you messed up. Think first before attempting that. Repainting the bonnet might run you $500 or more.

 

dang it, i need to go to a meeting...!

 

wat i would do is (im pretty lazy), i would first mask around the blobs
of hardened paint that you have.

then take a corner of a 1000grit sand paper, roll it up a little and start
sanding away the blob. you can probably do the first step dry until you get
pretty even to the surrounding paint.

replace the masking tape with a new tape if worn.

then dip that sand paper into a little dixie cup or watever with water,
and wet sand it until you get a slight concave.

dry with some rubbing alcohol, and touch up the concave using
your factory touchup paint applying it with a toothpick with tip
flattened. (just tap something hard and it will flatten). I usually
just put a dab of paint into a plastic disposable cup or laminate
and use that as my paint pallet.

let it dry for about a week, take some ScratchX and a soft foam
pad, and polish away trying to get it as level as possible to the
surrounding paint. if you screw up, don't worry. just polish away
with the ScratchX.

 

Thanks a lot for the help everyone. I think I have enough to move forward on a fix for this.

You are all too awesome!!!!

 

Be very careful, especially if you go the wet-sanding/polishing route. I've done a fair share of both, and I'm still not immune to mistakes.

I recently had to have a friend's bonnet/front bumper re-painted ($1350) because I messed up the paint trying to flatten out some touch-up paint.

The problem was that I didn't fully understand how the "Hot Orange" MINI paint is applied. I thought it was a standard primer/metallic color coat/clearcoat arrangement, but it's not. It's actually primer, then a non-metallic orange-red basecoat, followed by a tinted clearcoat that has the metallic particles in it, then finally the regular clearcoat.

When I was wet-sanding, I never got down into the basecoat, but the small amount of clearcoat I took off included some of the tinted layer, so I ended up with a "blotchy" area that didn't match the surrounding finish.

Fortunately, the local Mercedes dealership has an *awesome* body shop, and they did a beautiful job of removing the bonnet stripes, painting the bonnet/bumper, and applying new stripes.

 

Sorry that you had to experience this. I've been there as well, and it's why I don't like people recommending to newbies to wetsand touchup if they have never tried it before. It only takes one stroke too many to damage the clear and require a repaint. I had a customer who had sanded too big of an area trying to do this and couldn't get the sanding scratches out. When wetsanding a customers car you have no idea the history on the car--whether previous repairs may have been made. Heck even a new car that the dealer bumped and repaired in the shop before selling to you could be a potential hazard. You just never know. Fixing someone elses mistake has it's risks--just don't go into it blindly.

Richard

 

Thanks - fortunately, I got lucky, and because of the circumstances, the re-paint was covered under my homeowner's insurance policy, with no deductible. (I wasn't charging my friend for the detailing work I was doing on her car, it happened in my driveway, and she was with me when it happened).

If I had been doing the work on a professional basis (i.e. charging her money), or if she had dropped off the car and then left, it wouldn't have been covered.

My insurance company (State Farm) was great - she took the car to the Mercedes body shop, got an estimate, and SF mailed her a check for the amount of the estimate within a day or two, and told her "if there are any unexpected costs over and above the estimate, let us know and we'll cut you a supplemental check for the additional costs").

 

WOW, that must have been a humdinger of a home insurance policy that you had with State farm. good for you.

 

Yep - we've been with State Farm for 21 years, and they've always been great. Here's another example:

We had a hurricane in 2003 that put a small branch through our roof. When the adjuster came out, he asked us "You lost electricity for a few days - you should also file for the food you had to throw out".

We hadn't even considered that, and hadn't bothered to keep track of exactly what/how much food we threw out. He said "Don't worry about it - we'll just put down $150 as a "typical amount". Right there on the spot, he hands us a check for the roof estimate plus another $150 for the food in our fridge. And this was a guy that had been flown in from out-of-state to help handle all of the hurricane claims and was probably working 15-18 hour days trying to see everyone that had been affected by the storm. I would have understood perfectly if he had been rushed/grouchy/unpleasant, but he was one of the nicest people I've ever met.

All of my experiences with State Farm have been about the same way, both with my homeowner's policy and with my cars/motorcycles.

 

Yes , I too am very pleased with State Farms response to my home problems after the last two hurricanes here in Florida. Ive been with them for 30 years for home and auto.

 

The funny thing is that even though I've only had my own policy with them since 1986, since my policy was an "offshoot" of my parent's policy, my "policy start date" is actually the same as theirs (1972). If my parents hadn't dropped all of their State Farm policies when we briefly moved overseas in the early 70's, Their "start date" (and mine) would have been 1954 (sixteen years before I was born)!

I don't know what the "policy start date" is used for, but I think some of my "long-term customer" discounts are based on being a customer for 35 years, even though I've only been driving for 21 years.