[RickRack]

Wetsanding & Compounding

My goal on the second day was to remove as many of the heavy scratches as possible. The car had tons of heavy scratches which were extremely deep and I questioned myself if they could be safely removed. I knew wetsanding would be necessary, so I pre-soaked several sheets of 2500 and 3000 grit Meguiar’s Uni-Grit wetsand paper in a wash bucket, with soapy water for lube. The wetsanding sheets create much finer sanding scratches if the sheets are pre-soaked for about 30 minutes prior to using.


While the sandpaper was soaking, I thoroughly inspected each panel and noted any troubled areas. Corvette’s are known for having extremely hard paint, but tend to have thin edges that burn very easy. Despite the condition of this particular car, it is actually the only C4 Corvette I have ever seen without burnt edges. This is probably because the car has never been machine polished before. I carefully taped each edge to ensure I did not remove any paint from the edges. All other delicate parts of the car were masked off as well.



Now that the wetsand paper had soaked, It was time to start wetsanding to see what I was up against. I started at the rear of the car since it was the worst. I used 2500 grit paper to start, followed by 3000 grit. I did not want to remove too much clear when wetsanding, so I only sanded the areas lightly. Some of the scratches were still visible after sanding, but I knew I could go back and do additional sanding if necessary. After each scratch was carefully wetsanded, I pulled out my Makita polisher and compounded the area with 3M Extra-Cut Compound (#06060) using a Shleigel twisted wool pad. Some of the scratches remained, but I slowly and patiently massaged out the scratches with the 3M ECC / wool pad combo. Some of the deeper scratched areas took nearly 12 passes until they were no longer visible and I was able to achieve 99% + correction on this area.
























Now that I had successfully removed all scratches from the rear bumper, I moved on to the lower panels behind the rear wheels, which take the most abuse from rocks, sand etc..