Paint Thickness Gauges

[Thomas Dekany]

Couldnt have said it better myself!



Jim

I have an M3 waiting to be detailed in my garage and before the owner left we took measurements. 1 quarter of the hood is between 88.5 - 90.9 Rest is in the 120s Now tell me that this gauge is not needed. It just paid for itself.

 

[SuperBee364]

Which tool do you use, tdekany?

 

[Thomas Dekany]

the one from Kleen car



Car Detailing Store

 

[RAG]

I use one for heavy scratch removal, but that's about it. Glad I have it, but certainly not required.

 

[Richard@BlackWOW]

It only has problems when I'm demoing it in front of a large class. It "always" works for me!:LOLOL



The PTG is useful for a lot of things. For one, it can tell you if you should even attempt a certain repair. Let's say you find the average thickness of a car is 5mil. But there is a scratch in one area that you want to wetsand and compound--but you find that it measures 3.8 to 4.2 in ONLY that area. It's very possible that someone already tried to buff that area, and if you go taking some 2500 grit to that--there won't be anything left to polish out.



The PTG is a lot like a radar detector. A radar detector doesn't prevent you from getting tickets--it just points out what you can't see. It's up to you to take the appropriate action with the data that it provides you.



Another thing that a PTG is useful for is confirming whether a car has been repainted. If you measure a panel that gives you 12mil, and other parts are 5mil, then you know.



Is the PTG a perfect tool? Nope, but it can be a useful part of your arsenal. If you really want to spend the big bucks to read fiberglass or aluminum, then either you're charging beacoup bucks to afford one--I've heard somewhere around $4,000--or you're doing more than just detailing paint.



Richard

I have gone to a couple of the detailing seminars hosted by Richard Lin (OctaneGuy) at his shop and he is a big beleiver in his PTG. I can see where the unit is useful, for example it showed that the paint on my Integra is only 4 mils thick. So obviously I don't want to do anything more aggressive than a light polish.

However his seems to constantly give him problems, bad reading, inoperative, no reading. Etc. Plus, and correct me if I am wrong here, it only works on painted ferrous material, so in other words it won't even give you a reading on a plastic panel.