How soon after paint to polish/seal

S

SteveG66

New member
I got into a mild fender bender in February. I got the car back late Feb, they rr the hood, fenders, and bumper. I can see where they left marring on the doors trying to repair some little scratches at the door crease by painting and buffing.



They said I could wash it but not to polish it for 2 months. I'm about 2 weeks away from the 2 month mark, I'm just dying to get the body back up to snuff after this long winter. I just don't want to ruin their paint job.



It's an 06 Honda Accord, if it matters, repainted from a reputable body shop.



Please let me know your thoughts if it's too soon, or how can I tell if I can run the pc on it to get rid of their marring.



THanks for eveyones continued work on this site, it has been an amazing place to go and read.



Steve G
 
You can go ahead and polish and you would probably be safe applying a sealant. I polished my car the day I got back from the painter but am waiting about a week before sealing.



Greg
 
cool, thats what I thought,



I got some Edge pads, Opti Poli Seal and Opti Polish.



I'm just anxious to get this car all polished up.



Thanks,

Steve
 
SteveG66- There's a thread somewhere in which MirrorFinishMan queried all the paint manufacturers...they all said the same thing, to wait at least 90 days. I can say from first-hand experience that even baked repaints continue to harden for a *long* time and sometimes you can even smell the outgassing.



Polising after 2 months should be fine, the paint will have hardened up quite a bit. Just start gentle as the correction of the new paint might go a lot easier than the correction of the *old* paint. You might find the differences between the two interesting...and if there's *no* difference, well, I'd find *that* interesting too!



I'd still wait another month to LSP, just to be on the safe side. I use glazes (my fave is Meg's #5) in the meantime.
 
Ok, my NooB status is gonna show....I've looked at the "decoder ring" and could not find what LSP means.



Please enlighten this uninformed one, I am embarassed to ask, as I'm sure it will will be fairly simple once it's been "shown" to me.



ALso, Can I use the OPT Polish this soon? I am assuming the OPT Poliseal is too soon then?



THanks
 
yugin said:
What to do with touch up paint after chip and scratch repair?
Click to expand...



I usually just go ahead and wax it after a few weeks...if the little spot in question never gets as hard as the surrounding paint that's OK with me. Though I did let the numerous touch-ups on the MPV go with just glaze. All depends on the vehicle and how easy/not it'd be to keep the touchups merely glazed.



I can see waxing immediately in some cases too...a never-optimally-hard touchup could still be better than a chip. It really *does* just all depend on the situation. It's not like the premature LSPing will make the clear cloud up or the paint fail (or at least I've never heard of it actually happening, sure never happened for me), it just never gets as hard as it could've.
 
I always wait to wet sand or buff a new finish until it's fully cured. I'd rather look at dirt in the paint instead of swirls. I amazes me why paint manufacturers don't allow shops to seal fresh paint, but their ok with sanding it??
 
David F.- As I understand it, the "no waxing" is a matter of not sealing the build film in a way that would prevent outgassing. While the sanding/polishing is a mechanical-type matter of the paint being hard enough to finish out OK, the outgassing is a separate (if related), purely chemical issue.



E.g., the S8's deer-incident repairs- a few of the repaired areas really needed some attention. A few days after shooting it, the shop was able to compound the new paint to the point where it looked pretty OK. After a few weeks I could compound/polish the paint and get it the way *I* wanted it, and it was easy because the paint was still pretty soft. A month or two later the paint was *much* harder (and harder to correct) but you could clearly smell the outgassing for a little over three months. Once it was finished doing that, the smell *immediately* went away and at that point (about 3.5-4 months) I was willing to LSP the new paint.
 
Accumulator - My point is that paint shouldn't have anything done to it but normal washing for atleast 30-60 days after it's sprayed. I'd avoid wet-sanding/buffing/sealing until the paint is completely cured and dry. I don't like the idea of removing the top layer of fresh paint before it's time/cured. Avoiding this will do nothing but ensure a proper long term finish. Look at how many threads get posted here about swirls and soft paint after people get a car painted. This could able be avoided by just waiting. Soft paint is alot easier to damage than fully cured paint. I think the reason why all body shops wet sand/compound after painting is becasue they don't want the customer to have to return to do it(car rentals, insurance obligations...)
 
Why should a paint manufacturer create a product that forces it’s customers to have their customers come back later? Paint and body shops want to get the job done and out the door. Their customers sure don’t want to go back to the shop. The first paint company to say they could do it all at once would get all of the business.



If swirls come from buffing fresh paint why do we see so many hack detailers swirling up factory finishes?



Paint shops cause swirls when they either don’t know how to avoid it or don’t care. Sometimes it’s because the painter’s only interested in shooting and nothing else. More often than not it’s because the painters are higher paid craftsman and the management saves money by having the shop’s lowest paid, least trained, least experienced workers do the buffing.



The most efficient time to do the sand, cut and buff is when the coating has cured to its most workable state. There’s a window of opportunity when the paint is hard enough to buff to a high gloss but not so hard that working it is obnoxiously difficult or time consuming. A well run shop that utilizes skilled craftsman and works closely with their suppliers can do it right in one pass, satisfy its customers and still make a profit.





PC.
 
David F.- I won't argue with "nothing but washing" possibly being *best*. With my beloved Jag's recent paintwork that's exactly what we're doing. But on my other vehicles (which were painted by others, not by my *best* guy) there were flaws that I wasn't gonna live with for that long. No, they shouldn't have been there, but I've only recently found somebody who does the level of work that I'm absolutely satisfied with and he won't work on just anything.



This is perhaps similar to our discussion of "blended clear", which has never caused any problems for me but isn't what some other people oughta have done in *their* situations.



Oh, and the shops that do my cars aren't in any hurry to get 'em back to me. Alternate transportation/cost/etc. are never an issue..the issues are always imperfections of one kind or another. Finding people who do decent work has been incredibly difficult! I've had literally dozens of cars painted over the years and very few of the jobs were to my satisfaction :( I let the Jag sit for years because I couldn't stand its paint issues and couldn't find anybody to fix them to my satisfaction until my pal (chief judge of the Jag Club of Ohio) finally found a miracle-worker.
 
I know I'm going to cath it for saying this. But I know a shop that has been painting for 40 years and they buff, polish, and wax the vehicle after they pull it out of the paint booth. They have never had a problem doing this and they are a very reputable shop. You can look on the side of the clear and it will tell you a polish time. I know for for most dupont it is 72 hours.
 
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