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- 50
Often we get small kinks, stone chips and scratches on our beloved cars which don't really deserve a trip to the body shop. This niche in the market has been taken up by companies who can come to your house and do these repairs on site, these are called SMART repairs, a well know franchise that does this for example is Chips Away. The level of work though is varied below being an example that I had come across which I would describe as unacceptable. It is marring in the paint that is not obviouse until you get up close or the sun catches it at the right angle, what you see ridges within the paint;
and the panel in general;
These ridges are caused by leveling/blending the re-sprayed area with wet and dry that is not clean. Soapy water is used for wet and dry paper for this precise reason.
The answer to this would be for me to level this off, for that I need to know what I have to work with as these marks are deep, so I take a reading of the thickness of the paint in this area using a non destructive paint thickness gauge;
For modern cars paint thickness is usually within the region of 100 microns, this showed I had plenty to play with although I would still need to progress carefully.
weapon of choice for removing the defects around this area was the Meguiars Solo Wool Light cutting pad. This is better for Japanese paints as they are inherently soft and so dont take much to cause burn through.
So several passes and measurements later and I have removed the marking. Final reading of the paint show how much I needed to take off to get rid of all these marks.
After having used such an agressive pad the next thing was to get rid of the holograming caused by the mopping using a polishing pad and eventually finishing pad, a close up of the result;
and finally from a distance to show no holograms or swirls within the paint even with 1kw halogen lighting;
and the panel in general;
These ridges are caused by leveling/blending the re-sprayed area with wet and dry that is not clean. Soapy water is used for wet and dry paper for this precise reason.
The answer to this would be for me to level this off, for that I need to know what I have to work with as these marks are deep, so I take a reading of the thickness of the paint in this area using a non destructive paint thickness gauge;
For modern cars paint thickness is usually within the region of 100 microns, this showed I had plenty to play with although I would still need to progress carefully.
weapon of choice for removing the defects around this area was the Meguiars Solo Wool Light cutting pad. This is better for Japanese paints as they are inherently soft and so dont take much to cause burn through.
So several passes and measurements later and I have removed the marking. Final reading of the paint show how much I needed to take off to get rid of all these marks.
After having used such an agressive pad the next thing was to get rid of the holograming caused by the mopping using a polishing pad and eventually finishing pad, a close up of the result;
and finally from a distance to show no holograms or swirls within the paint even with 1kw halogen lighting;
