It seems that Porsche's pretty much come with some mild orange peel. That alone wouldn't really bother me.
I bought the car new but it had been sitting on the lot for about 8 months and it had some acid-rain pitting. Very small, just in the clear coat but enough to keep the car from really shining.
Yea, no kidding. Scared the crap out of me. It actually started a while ago when I had a tiny paint chip right in the middle of the hood. I did the proper repair and when I wetsanded the "blob" down to the clear coat, it looked better than the rest of the hood!
I didn't realize how much smoother the paint could look without the orange peel and minor pitting. That's when I started looking into the possibility of wetsanding the rest of the car. Read a bunch of posts here and saw the pictures. The process made sense and I tried it out on a beater first.
Oh yea. The garage floor looked terrible. It took almost as much work to get all the dust off as it did to detail the rest of the car. It's a very messy job. Between the wetsanding, 3m compound and the rotary slinging it I had a huge cleanup to do. Remind me again why I did this....
I used a rubber sanding block I bought at the auto parts store. The Porsche is very curvy so I couldn't use it everywhere. Had to put a piece of paper in the palm of my hand for those areas.
Anyway, small cooler of water. Someone here said it works better to add some rubbing alcohol to the water. Anyway, soak the paper and fill a spray bottle with water. Pick a 2' x 2' spot and get started. As you sand, you'll see the water dripping down start to look milky. That's the clear coat. Sand the spot for a bit and then wipe it down with a dry cloth. You're sanding out the orange peel so those "peaks" will come out first leaving the "valleys." It's pretty obvious when you see it. The peaks will be dull from the sanding but the valleys will still be shiny. You want to sand again until they're level. Keep the area you're sanding wet. If the paper starts to grab, it's too dry. This is a MESSY process! Repeat for the rest of the area you're working. Come back and "spot sand" any areas where you missed.
Wipe everything down and wetsand again lightly with 3000 grit if you can find it. Not really necessary but it'll make the compounding easier since you've remove most of the scratches from the 2000 grit.
The rest of the process has been covered here plenty of times. Yellow pad on a rotary with your choice of polishes. I used 3M PI-II but there are plenty of cut cleaners out there. SMR after that on an Orange pad. Machine Glaze on a Black pad followed by a good wax.
Sure the car looks great and yes new cars CAN be wetsanded but the question to ask yourself before attempting any wetsand is, SHOULD I wetsand it?
Being that the UV inhibitors live within the first 2 mils of top coat it only takes one or two passes too many and then it's bad news. You could have premature paint failure and because it was wetsanded your warranty is voided.
The problem comes from multiple wetsanding passes and then more buffing to remove the sanding marks which can greatly reduce the clear coat and the longevity of the paints life.
It would be interesting to take a paint meter and measure the paint film thickness of a new Porsche and then read your paint films thickness, compare the two. There may be little to no difference but there again there may be a great difference.
If you are able to get the paint metered let us know your results.
Yea, the pitting had to go. It was either wetsand it to get the pitting and orange peel out, or have the car repainted. I decided to try the wetsanding process and see how it turned out. I'm pretty happy with the results. The car looks better than ever and it doesn't seem to have lost any depth to the shine.
