Has anyone color sanded their new car in order to get rid of the orage peel?

 

If your MINI is a garage/trailer queen that never gets driven, then wetsanding (colorsanding) the paint to remove orange peel might make sense, but I think most people are not interested in halving the thickness or more of the already thin paint. At about 5mil for primer (1st gens), or basecoat/clearcoat, you're talking about a combined thickness a little more than a sheet of paper before sanding.

For those that don't know what the OP means, take a look at the paint around the license plate area. Look at how the light reflects--the paint will look textured like an orange. These are ripples in the paint. Show cars are sanded down and polished to remove this for a super sharp reflection. Factory paint is already so thin, that intentionally thinning it usually isn't an option.

Richard

 

I agree with OG that unless you want a show car color sanding is a lot of work and with factory paint a big risk.

I used to work at a body shop when we painted with lacquer. About once a week someone with a repair would want 'glass' smooth paint for the repair. We would try to talk them out of it but the customer was willing to pay for the extra work (wet sanding). Most of the time the customer would either want the repair resprayed because the repaired area looked to good compared to the rest of the car or go away unhappy with the rest of the car.
Also, the process is very time intensive or expensive if you have someone else do it.