Tips and tricks for light colored paint inspection

C

cbuxton5200

New member
I've done some searching, but haven't really run into any articles or posts about how to inspect light colored cars. Certainly it is easier to see scratches, swirls, and defects on dark colored vehicles, but what are some tips or tricks to seeing those things on light cars? I'd also be interested to hear how you inspect for quality work during the correction process. How do you see marring, or dull spots to know when to use a finer polish, etc? I picked up one of the Kobalt LED flashlights from Lowes that has a 500 lumen output. It's very light and bright and I like to use it for looking closely at the paint. Other tips and tricks from the autopian group??
 
Use different light sources, halogen, florescent, sunlight, viewed at different angles, from different distances. The different light sources will help show different types of marring. I try to move the cars in and out of the shop when it's sunny when doing full correction to help the inspection process. Make sure you give a good IPA wipedown before you inspect to make sure there's no polishing oil or residue covering up any marring.
 
Repeated trial and error across a wide variety of different types of lighting is definitely a must. I use a fluorescent shop light often when viewing my white vehicle.
 
As Bill D said, fluorescent light can be surprisingly good for certain types of flaws on white. Utterly useless for swirl-spotting on silver though.



For silver, I generally do best with incandescents and/or the SunGun, both/either used in an otherwise dark environment. And it's not about brightness; I've had 60W bare bulbs in ceiling-mount fixtures show flaws I didn't see with my fancy 1000W halogens.



And yeah, it does take a lot of effort...different viewing/illumination angles and distances. I honestly spend at least as much time inspecting my silver Audis as I do correcting them (and Audi correction doesn't go all that fast ;) ).



Most people can't imagine what it really means to spend more than five minutes inspecting a panel, but it's often at the very end of a loooong inspection session that I spot something I'd previously missed. I mean really...if you spend [however many hours] polishing your car...product onto the pad or paint, running the buffer, wiping off the residue, spraying and wiping with IPA/etc.,... think about spending that much time on just the inspections, over and over and over again.



Of course, this all raises the question of "who cares if it's so hard to see when you're looking for it?!?", not that I always subscribe to such sensibility myself :o
 
Bill D said:
That's the Curse of Autopia doing its dirty work! :o :D
Click to expand...



Yes indeed!



Ya know, I don't need any specialized lighting, or fancy techniques, to see the marring on the (white) Crown Vic, but that's probably a large part of why the car's a lotta fun; I don't sweat it when something happens to the precious paint ;)
 
I agree both with the different lights and distances. I have a light coloured car (vw wheat beige) and during my inspections it helps me when I look not on the light reflection itself but 5-10 cm (2-5in) around it from all different angles.



What also helps me during sun inspection is tilting the horizontal panels (the sun doesn't move as I want it too :) ).
 
what really helps me with silver is to just find the reflection of the light source and to avoid the light it shines on the panel. you'd want to see the light source on the panel but shun the light it gives off, if that is at all possible. works for me.



this is why the high street lamps are great cos you can see the light source on the panel but the light it throws doesn't reach the panel as much.



is there a bulb that is really bright but has very little throw? :lol1:
 
What Type of Lighting



Fluorescent light is often not enough to correctly view the panels for scratches, although it will show many imperfections that natural light does not. But this type of light does not pick up fine swirl marks all that well. Some work areas have insufficient lighting and are just plain dark and you will never know if the swirls are gone. I have found that halogen lights help to a degree to simulate sunlight to check if the swirls remain. As can be seen it takes more than one light source to be able to pick up on the varied types surface scratches.



Dark Field Micro Inspection



Since concourse cars are judged solely on the way light reflects from their surfaces this is what really determines the appearance of a car, so you should inspect it under all possible lighting conditions.



For a surface to be optically near ‘perfect’ it should be free of all surface imperfections. The surface should be viewed very closely and from all possible angles. Start by looking at the surface in a darkened room, once your eyes have fully dilated, turn on a bright Halogen light beam. Direct the beam away from you and at a low angle and from various directions (you’ll be able to see even the most minor paint film surface imperfection) this is 100X more sensitive than viewing a vehicles paint film surface in normal light. This methodology is especially useful for light colored paint; especially white and light silver metallic



This viewing technique is an adaptation of “Dark field microscopy” used in many scientific fields. Direct or cloudy sunlight, shaded, low-angled, directly overhead or light reflected from other surfaces, or the type of artificial light the surface is viewed under can all influence what surface imperfections can or cannot be seen

 
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