twheat said:
OK so I got to testing tonight and here is what I found. The car is 3.5 to 4.0 mils throughout. The thing my buddy said though is over all those are good numbers, but you really don't know how thick the base coat really is since the gauges really only measure all layers. So with that being said is that a safe number to use power gloss on parts of the car? The parts that need the power gloss measured 3.5 to 4.0 like the rest. What do you all think?
Honestly, I think that nobody can say for certain. Really. IF the paint is supposed to be 4 mils everywhere then the areas that are down to 3.5 shouldn't be polished any more. But that's not all *that* likely IMO as paint thickness simply varies a lot on most vehicles.
It just goes back to this being a matter of some *very* fine measurements...when the rule-of-thumb says not to remove more than 0.0003"-0.0005", well, that's getting pretty precise (which is why a lot of us prefer to measure in microns).
If it were mine I wouldn't hesitate to use the PG on it. But I'd be careful and I'd keep an eye on those polished areas.
Anyhow, your Bimmer is single stage, right? That makes all the "how much you can remove" stuff, like what I posted above, moot. Different type of paint, different ballgame.
The rules for thinning ss are simply different; you can generally thin it more than basecoat/clearcoat. I've cut ss down to primer and the super-thin paint surrounding the cut-through did OK. The problem is that as the thin ss oxidizes, you'll remove more and more fixing that, which will enlarge the too-thin area. It really only matters as much as you care about it; the areas I cut through did OK because I kept them heavily waxed; no problem for ages until I finally had the areas repainted and that vehicle was outside 24/7. Just gotta *really* maintain the damaged areas.
