Down to 4 MICRONS LEFT!!

I just did a SAAB that ave. PT was 4.5mill damn thin. I found a painted spot in the engine bay that was not clear coated it was 3.5mill so extrapolated only 1mill of clear! I was blown away.



YOU really need to establish how much CLEAR is there by finding a spot without clear and compare.



Cheers,

GREG
 
yakky, so basically what you are saying is that you can really only hit a car once with 105, twice and you are blowing through it?
 
toyotaguy said:
yakky, so basically what you are saying is that you can really only hit a car once with 105, twice and you are blowing through it?
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Not at all, just to be clear, I'm sitting with the PC, CCS 4" yellow pad, well saturated with M105, in one spot for approx 60 seconds applying approx 20lbs of pressure on 04 Mercedes silver. This is all it was taking for me to remove scratches that were almost deep enough to catch a nail.
 
damn! thats rough! why not get out the wool?



anyway, I just wanted to make sure thats not what you were saying! lol 105 is a staple in my arsenal!
 
toyotaguy said:
damn! thats rough! why not get out the wool?



anyway, I just wanted to make sure thats not what you were saying! lol 105 is a staple in my arsenal!
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I was just doing a quick wash and wax (with poliseal) and he wanted me to hit a few spots. They were all small so getting out the rotary and wool would have been more trouble and I would have had to follow up with something else. This was the first time using a PTG on a friends car and I was happy with my process.



1. We ONR'd the car

2. I had him put painters tape a few inches away from every spot he wanted me to work on.

e55_quick1.JPG


3. I measured the area and put down a round about average on the tape.

e55_quick2.JPG


4. I polished a bit, measured, polished, measure, until it was gone or I hit 80 microns.

e55_quick3.JPG




Finished product (crummy lighting)

e55_quick4.JPG
 
PTG is a waste of time for most - if you didn't set the gate values right it means nothing. If you didn't measure in the same spot is means nothing. Even moving a half cm over can give drastically different numbers - you'd need to train a laser on one spot, polish, and measure that exact pinpoint again.
 
efnfast said:
PTG is a waste of time for most - if you didn't set the gate values right it means nothing. If you didn't measure in the same spot is means nothing. Even moving a half cm over can give drastically different numbers - you'd need to train a laser on one spot, polish, and measure that exact pinpoint again.
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Why, who polishes with a pin? If you tape that area you can polish that area and just touch up the tape area after removal.
 
efnfast said:
PTG is a waste of time for most - if you didn't set the gate values right it means nothing. If you didn't measure in the same spot is means nothing. Even moving a half cm over can give drastically different numbers - you'd need to train a laser on one spot, polish, and measure that exact pinpoint again.
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That sort of statement reminds me of people who say radar detectors don't work. Is a PTG a binary tool, no, but it does a fantastic job of telling ME when to stop polishing. I take 5-10 readings in an area with a deep scratch and write down the range. Then I polish and stop, take more readings, and repeat until I've hit my threshold or the scratch is gone.



It is also a fantastic way to judge whether you can even start polishing. If someone's car has been polished before, you are playing with fire if you go after deeper scratches and don't measure.



I don't care who you are, you can't eye how much paint is left with the super thin 100 micron paint jobs on most cars now. So you either gamble, or use a tool that will help you.
 
ETGs aren't magic, and no, I don't use mine much, but now and then I wouldn't want to be without it. It's saved me from a few serious "oops!" moments and it can come in handy when evaluating used cars prior to purchase. I can often spot unusually thin areas, especially on metallics, but not always...
 
Accumulator said:
ETGs aren't magic, and no, I don't use mine much, but now and then I wouldn't want to be without it. It's saved me from a few serious "oops!" moments and it can come in handy when evaluating used cars prior to purchase. I can often spot unusually thin areas, especially on metallics, but not always...
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Definately a good idea as an evaluation tool for a used car purchase.



However, I meant moreover in the false sense of security it gives people who then decide they can go and hammer a car - i've seen, for example, where a roof was re-painted and had healthy clear everywhere, except for 1 small particular spot. How that spot had next ot nothing on it, I'll never know, maybe just bad luck on the respray (since it was just recently resprayed and nobody had touched it yet).





You take your PTG and measure measure measure and if you miss that spot, you go along thinking 'okay, healthy clear, okay to proceed!', only to run into a surpise there and wonder *** went wrong.





I guess what I'm trying to say is that I believe in the hands of most people it creates a false sense of security. To give a general picture of the car, yes, (to know where something may have been repainted), but to use that and say 'healthy clear, I can pound on it until the cats come home' just doesn't sit right with me.



Oh well, I also believe in not taking out super deep scratches, just minimizing them and having enough clear to play with another day, so my thinking isn't in line with mosts on here anymore :D Nowadays aggressive to me is a white pad and 106 :LOLOL
 
efnfast- Yeah, I too prefer to err on the side of caution and I'd rather have imperfect oe paint than risk the need a repaint :xyxthumbs



I see your point about somebody ending up with a false sense of security...I guess it's like any other tool, you simply gotta know what you're doing and it's no substitute for critical thinking.



I will say that without a doubt my ETG saved me from messing up my pal's '60 Jag; I was able to discover a *VERY* thin spot where, well...who knows what happened, but I suspect the painter simply messed up. It looked fine, but had I just gone ahead and corrected the marring there like I did on the rest of the panel, I woulda caused problems. Heh heh, before I found that spot I was thinking to myself that I was wasting time taking all those readings :o
 
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