Corpsvette

So I have been polishing cars since I was a kid in the mid 1980's for spending cash. I am by no means a professional but feel very confident in the work I do. I practice on my truck and careful on the car. I use a Flex dual orbiter and have all the pads with SIP and Zaino Fusion. Today a buddy asked me to help him because he grazed his car pulling into the garage. I told him some of the scratches were into the primer but i could remove the majority. It is a 4 year old metallic blue Ford Mustang. I start with the orange pad and SIP and removed most of the scratches and he is very impressed. I started working on some of the deeper scratches and told him it would require wet sanding or repaint and that I wasn't comfortable with that. He asked me to do what I could. Before I knew it, I had cut through the clear into the paint using SIP, and orange pad and the Flex and did not sit in one spot. I was sick. He still says the car looks 200 percent better than it did, and it does look much better. He even asked me to remove some other scratches from his wife car which I did with no problems. I offered to pay to have it fixed but he really didn't seem bothered but it bugs the crap out of me. The primer is black and you have look very close to see it but the blue on the pad was the proof. I just can't believe it cut through the clear, the paint and into the primer. I even asked if the car had been repainted. He bought it brand new. I wasn't being that aggressive and had only work on it for about 15 minutes. WHAT THE HECK DID I DO WRONG? Is the clear coat that soft and thin on Fords? Please, no Ford knocking, I think they are sharp cars.

Roughrider

A buddy of mine has a 2008 Mustang Bullitt. He doesn't know how but ended up with a scratch on his trunk lid. From what he found out Ford puts a very soft clear coat compared to what GM does with the Corvette.

0zoomzoom mazda5@properautocare.com

Very strange to hear the Ford Mustangs have a soft clear on them, 97% of the ones I had done were the hard side, some when repainted and those were on the soft side. Are you sure you cut or burn the clear coat?

0zoomzoom mazda5@properautocare.com

Did you sand the finish?

Stewart Allison

When working on a buddies car I and not knowing the thickness of the clear I always work the opposite way I start with a finishing buff and go harder until I think I'm getting somewhere. Some clears are just very, very thin. If you know the car has had a flow coat of clear on it I get nasty but some factory cars are just very thin. Stewy

0TH0001@properautocare.com

While SIP is considered a moderate polish (relative) it isn't removing mils of paint at a time, so I am not sure you did anything 'wrong'.

It can take a long time with a very heavy compound/wool pad/aggressive technique to thin the clear-coat, let alone strike through.

I would guess that the area of your friend's Mustang had previous work done to it, thinning the clear coat in that spot. With no way of measuring you could have been treading on thin ice and not even known it.

Corpsvette

Thanks, you all are making feel a little better. I went back over and told him to get an estimate and he refuses. One thing I probably should have mentioned, I live in VA but keep all my products in the house at room temperature so while the SIP was at 75 degrees, the car was at about 45 degrees. Would this have made a difference?

One more note, I did not get all the scratches out and you could not catch your finger on those scratches before I started. Now the ones down to the primer were obviously deeper.

I did not sand at all on this car. Orange pad, SIP, and Flex orbital polisher only.

THanks, Jim

0zoomzoom mazda5@properautocare.com

BTW did you get a few shots of the area that's in question here? Would be nice to see that area and the surrounding area also.

0TH0001@properautocare.com

Jim, just to give you an idea...

I have wetsanded (1500 to 3000 grit), made two passes with Meguiars M105 compound/wool pad/rotary at about 1500 rpm while using moderate pressure, followed by Menzerna SIP on an orange pad with a DA, followed by Menzerna PO85rd on a black pad and only removed .2 mils of paint!

I have sanded, cut, and buffed (and measured) so many paint jobs and sometimes I am still amazed at how little of the film is really removed.

The temperature should have no impact (relative to your question). Healthy clear coat on a modern car is going to range from about 1.5 mils (very thin) to about 3 mils in thickness. You would have to do a LOT of polishing with SIP/Orange Pad to remove enough material to strike through to the base coat underneath.

Either the area had been aggressively sanded and polished before to fix previous damage (perhaps at the dealer or in shipping) or it had been repainted, or something.

EliteGreg

Is it possible if the paint was already scratched to the primer that the pad/abrasives caught the clear on the edge and ripped it off?

Onyasix

Don't think that just because the car was bought new, that it has never had any body work done on it. They do get sratched sometime during delivery or while on the lot. I'm speaking from experience. After four years, I discovered that a car I bought new off the show room floor, that the door had been repainted.