Ranking paint hardness

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tsantoro

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From hardest to softest, how would you rank the paint hardness of the automakers?
 
this can not be done......sorry



people try to start this kind of thread all the time but

there are just too many different paints



example: it was just listed that BMW is hard

but some are very soft
 
I find it's impossible to make black & white statements about paint hardness. For example, some BMWs (quite a few of the new models) have very soft paint.
 
What???? This puzzles me.



This question assumes way too much and although I am not a pro, when I read people say "oh I'm working on an Audi, therefore really hard paint", it leaves me scratching my head.



How can you know what they paint is like before you even touch the car?



Is 2002 BMW 3 series made from Plant "x" on a humid wednesday supposed to have the same paint as a 2008 7 series BMW made from plant "y" when it was -20 in Stuttgart? How can you generalize?
 
I've read on the forum before that car models made in the same at different times can actually have either hard or soft paint depending on what they used at the time.



Some cars do have reputations for being hard such as vettes, audi's/vw, and chrysler. Some like ford have been known to be rock hard and butter soft (I have yet to see the rock hard).
 
backwoods_lex said:
Some like ford have been known to be rock hard and butter soft (I have yet to see the rock hard).
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03 HD F-150 that you can take a jack hammer to and it may not scratch...08 navigator that will scratch if you look at it wrong. Both have the exact same paint code from Ford. Go figure.
 
bwalker25 said:
an 2008 Jet Black bimmer comes to my mind right now....ah saturday was a long day....
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long day how?... my 2007 Jet Black BMW has super soft paint... Marring occurs so easily
 
Speaking for the Euro market, I can say that Hondas and Toyotas are very soft. Medium for me would be Opel, Skoda and Ford. Hard as diamonds would be Mercedes, VW, BMW and newer Ferraris and Maseratis. As for the ceramic finishes they're extremely difficult to polish out perfectly. I've tried every combo possible...

1. soft pad+medium polish = polish scratches the paint and flashes too fast to finish up right, leaves micro-marring and a less aggressive combo won't put a dent in it

2. harder pad+less abrasive polish=pad's doing all the cutting and you still end up with micro-marring

3. same pad+more aggressive polish=taking off more paint and still leaves micro-marring



When I say "micro" I really mean it... it's the kind of marring that only shows up with eagle eyes and a strong LED lamp... Anyone else have this experience with ceramics?
 
There are just a *few* generalizations that are pretty safe. One is with Audis; new, old, their b/c paints are hard.



The *one* exception is the very weird case of some Nagaro (sp?) blue S4s that are *very* soft as in PIA, stupid-soft. Otherwise Audi simply has their factory paint made to be hard stuff. So if it's an Audi, with factory paint, and it's not an S4 in Nagaro blue, then you should plan on the paint being quite hard.
 
oeklm said:
long day how?... my 2007 Jet Black BMW has super soft paint... Marring occurs so easily
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He probably means long because they are hard to finish down on; even with a set routine it can be very difficult to get the paint hologram/haze free. That is unless he ran into a hard one, which I have yet to see on here. I've worked on quite a few jb e90/e92/e93s and they've all been incredibly soft.



Someone else mentioned Infiniti; I agree for the most part they are soft, but I have worked on a few M35/M45's that were very hard.



I really do think it's impossible to generalize by manufacturer. It's even hard to generalize by model. Model/year/color all seem to play some role in it.
 
As mentioned by many of the guy on here, by manufacturer is impossible (I have been told that BMW uses three different paint systems) models might have different paint. My model you can get closer, IE most G37's are soft, and as noted the M35/45's are noticably harder.



My Chevy HHR has a ridiculously soft paint but a Chevy Corvette tends to have hard paint. There can be specific differents on models of the same year, color, etc. Many new Jet Black 3 series have soft paint, but I have worked on a couple that where so hard it was like they where buffing resistant. I know Toto had thi issue as well.







Here is part of my post from another thread on this topic



IME, from hardest to least (just a few specific models/colors)



10+ 1986 Lamborghini Countach, black

10 2006 Lamborghini Gallardo, orange metallic

09 2007 BMW Jet Black 335 (rare case)

08+ Most modern Audi/VW paints

08 Most C5/C6 Corvette's/Most Mercedes Benz/Ferrari Enzo

07 Most metallic BMW's

06 Modern Ferrari Paint (F430/599)

05 GM Truck Paint

04 Ford Truck Paint/Previous Ferrari paint

03 Single stage Ferrari paint/modern Porsche paint/Jaguar paint

02 Range Rover/Bentley/Rolls Royce Paint/Most BMW Jet Black paint

01 Bentely Azure/Arnage Paint (hand built)/Nissan G Coupe/Sedan Paint
 
so hard paint would require heavier compound then a soft paint car even though they have the same amount of damage?
 
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