New Paint with Orange Peel

S

Subaroo

New member
My car just came out of the body shop after being rear-ended a month or so ago. I have a 2011 Subaru Outback, caramel bronze metallic paint. Anyhow, looking at the areas that were painted, they appear to have more orange peel (mostly on the bumper cover which wraps around to the sides of the car) when I compare it to the factory paint near it. I was just wondering if this is normal for body shop work and I just need to live with it or should I have them do something about it? My thinking is that the car should come back looking like it did before the accident (which was basically brand new). Although I am not positive, I doubt that there was a noticable amount of orange peel in that area before the new paint. At any rate, I wouldn't want them to take off all the clear coat trying to level it out. Just wondering what some of you think...

Also, the shop told me that for the next 60 days I should only wash the new paint - no waxing or polishing. By then it will be the end of January - usually 0° weather) so it probably won't have a coat of wax on until spring when it warms up around late March/early April as I don't have anywhere heated to take it. Can the new paint take this? Will the road salt and dirt affect the new paint without any kind of protection?

Thanks,
 
Orange peel can definitely happen at a body shop. I had my bumper repainted on my previous car before selling it and was a bit ticked off at the results. Well rather than hand it back to a hack with polisher at a shop that turned out that work in the first place, I fixed it myself. As soon as I got home I busted out the sandpaper, polisher and M205/PO85RD. I had the car sold in 24hrs with a perfect finish.

To your question on waxing new paint. I have seen a few products that state they will let new paint breathe and is safe to use. However, they are mostly right, it is not wise to wax fresh paint.

Someone at the Autopia Car Care may be able to recommend one of their products for fresh paint. I will PM you a link to one product I found.
 
Usually orange peel can be buffed out. It just takes time. You need to figure which products and pads do the best job. Try a test spot first figure out the process then do the whole area.
 
TID10 said:
To your question on waxing new paint. I have seen a few products that state they will let new paint breathe and is safe to use. However, they are mostly right, it is not wise to wax fresh paint.

Someone at the Autopia Car Care may be able to recommend one of their products for fresh paint. I will PM you a link to one product I found.
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for new paint use 3M hand glaze. its designed for this. it lets the paint breathe & doesnt mess with the curing process. its not a long lasting product but its what you use to get by untill the paint is cured. colder temps will mean the paint takes longer to cure.


was the paint baked in an oven (spray booth) or was it cured with portable heat lamps? either way, get 3M hand glaze & apply that for the next month or two.

to remove or reduce orangepeel the paint has to be wetsanded.

i started out as a prep guy in the body shop so i know. :D
 
I Wouldn't let the body shop fix the orange peel, chances are that they damage the paint. I agree with everyone else, the paint needs to breathe for a while before being topped/waxed.
 
I can agree with the comments on waiting. Big A is right on with using the glaze mentioned. It is not very durable but offers some protection.

Wet-sanding..... I don't know how familiar you are with it. Peel can be different for a few factors.
1- too dry on first coat. Sometimes sanding this can result in what looks like craters.
2- too far from panel, fast reducers this will result in deep peel. This can be mellowed down.
3 - multiple layering beyond two heavy coats. This is probably not the case here. Industry repair standard is two coats. This would be done with a show car which would have 4 - 6 coats and sanded flat.

If you are going to sand the object is to mellow or blend to the rest of the peel. If you go too flat it will be noticable near edges and areas backed away from. I DO NOT recommend sanding edge to edge without a lot of experience. Remember you probably only have two coats.

The peel doesn't mean some one did something wrong per say. Most vehicles are painted by robots in a very controlled environment. The are guided by an exact distance, pressures, etc.

It is very possible for a human to spray flat. There is a very fine line though between flat and running the clear. Most shops do not want to take the risks on and costs involved to fix a panel that has runs because of trying to spray it perfectly flat.

I do paint but 90% is show vehicles. There is extra wait time between coats. Things are adjusted based on conditions that day. A surgically clean environment is also a must. Operating this way is not cost effective in the production world.
 
Being very new to all this, I don't think I am ready to start wetsanding a new car.

Again, not knowing really anything about painting, can the orange peel be either in the color paint or the clearcoat?

If the orange peel is the result of spraying the color paint, and if I wet sand to level the paint and the clearcoat is very thin, could I or would I need to wet sand through the high spots in the clearcoat to level the paint? I believe I've read before that clearcoat is only microns thick (maybe this is factory paint only?) I wouldn't want to sand through the clearcoat and have no clear protection on the color paint other than an applied sealant or wax. Does this happen sometimes when leveling the orange peel?
 
Subaroo said:
Being very new to all this, I don't think I am ready to start wetsanding a new car.

Again, not knowing really anything about painting, can the orange peel be either in the color paint or the clearcoat?

If the orange peel is the result of spraying the color paint, and if I wet sand to level the paint and the clearcoat is very thin, could I or would I need to wet sand through the high spots in the clearcoat to level the paint? I believe I've read before that clearcoat is only microns thick (maybe this is factory paint only?) I wouldn't want to sand through the clearcoat and have no clear protection on the color paint other than an applied sealant or wax. Does this happen sometimes when leveling the orange peel?
Click to expand...

Orange peel is in the clear coat. Basecoat is reduced so thin that if it does have texture it will appear granular under the clear.

It is very easy to sand through on edges and rounded corners if not careful. Another problem is you can go through during the polishing stages getting the sand scratches out.
The other thing that can happen is maybe not going through after all this but making the clear so thin it fails later.
I hope this helps. I'm not declaring myself the expert but do have some experience.
 
Subaroo said:
My car just came out of the body shop after being rear-ended a month or so ago. I have a 2011 Subaru Outback, caramel bronze metallic paint. Anyhow, looking at the areas that were painted, they appear to have more orange peel (mostly on the bumper cover which wraps around to the sides of the car) when I compare it to the factory paint near it. I was just wondering if this is normal for body shop work and I just need to live with it or should I have them do something about it? My thinking is that the car should come back looking like it did before the accident (which was basically brand new). Although I am not positive, I doubt that there was a noticable amount of orange peel in that area before the new paint. At any rate, I wouldn't want them to take off all the clear coat trying to level it out. Just wondering what some of you think...

Also, the shop told me that for the next 60 days I should only wash the new paint - no waxing or polishing. By then it will be the end of January - usually 0° weather) so it probably won't have a coat of wax on until spring when it warms up around late March/early April as I don't have anywhere heated to take it. Can the new paint take this? Will the road salt and dirt affect the new paint without any kind of protection?

Thanks,
Click to expand...
As a former PPG instructor & painter, I will dare say that some poor painting skills were involved.. but then I should 1st ask waht was used on your car. The body shop sure told you the truth when saying not to wax in several weeks because the paint must cure or in other words evaporate the chemicals, a faster way to do this is to wet sand & let it stay like that for some time. By doin this you just cracked the clear coat & evaporation is quicker. I did this to a custom job I did on 1 of my cars & had to hear all the lousy comments from my friends because they could only see a dull finish & not wait to give their opinion in several weeks when the car was finally polished & waxed. Nothing should happen to the car over Winter weather unless your driving 65mph in reverse all the time & the road salt gets a direct hit on the bubper. The orange peel normally is caused by spraying too thick coats, but if the orange peel is in the base-coat all the clear coat will have to be sanded down to remove the "peel skin" & apply a new clear coat. A good painter makes is job not show because the idea is for the car to look as if nothing had evr happened to it. good luck there. :bigups
 
Blindman said:
As a former PPG instructor & painter, I will dare say that some poor painting skills were involved....... A good painter makes is job not show because the idea is for the car to look as if nothing had ever happened to it. good luck there. :bigups
Click to expand...

So laziness is the cause then? :hmmm:
 
To weigh in here...

Orange peel can be in both the base or the clear (if it is the base, it will be in both). However it doesn't really matter since if you level the clear coat, you remove the texture and it will appear smooth anyways.

However, as John eluded, base coats are thin, and if they have signficant texture it will appear granular underneath the smooth clear coat.

Moving a step forward, before doing anything I would go to the nearest Subaru dealer and compare your car to theirs. You might be surprised to find that the texture on the bumpers doesn't match the rest of the car (usually the color is slightly off as well) and you may find areas on the bumper that have more texture than other areas. This is because most car companies use a third party to paint the bumpers. Compare your car against a new one.
 
weird i just had the baja painted (bumper and hood) and i was told to do anything i wanted the only thing that was a no-no was a teflon coating but he said i would have to really look around to get that.

Ps no peel on mine
 
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