Shag Pile

[G60SC_Stoney 0]

i agree with the above comment, and i am one of the people paying a silly amount for a respray, i wasnt even going to get the whole car resprayed initially, i only went in to get the engine bay sprayed up for the new engine, then throught, 'ah b*llocks, might as well do the whole thing, price please!' but thats not to say my car has a better finish than someone like Goldies paint, sure mine is mint and doesnt have any orange peel etc, but then so is his, i only did it to tidy up the body and remove some dents etc, which has taken the car to another level, hence the new interior and all the other bits im tarting it up with.

 

Theres nothing i would have liked more than just slapping the engine in the old, tatty shell and just using it as a daily driver, but I know and most people on here that know me, are aware that i get bored quickly and have to be doing something to a car at some point. Thats why i have my VR6 to play with while the G60 is off the road.

 

So, i do agree that just because a car has had a respray doesnt mean the finish is any better than the original paint that was put on it 13-17 years ago. its the effort put into it. Goldie polishes his to get a quality finish, i just get the thing resprayed. end result is the same.

[boost monkey 0]

I would have thought that paint technology in the past 20 years would have improved though, resulting in a bog-standard 2-pack back then being inferior to whatever they use now? IIRC, 2-pack has now changed a fair bit and is water-based or something.

 

Unless the treatments put onto the original paintwork are somehow transitioning the molecular structure of the paint itself, or treating it to be a tighter knit polymer, I can't see how an off-the-shelf product can improve the paint so much, unless the original paintwork has developed the orange-peeling, and (for example) Goldie's is just showing through the original quality? :confused4:

 

fair play, if it does work though! :cheers:

[herisites 0]

Yep all new cars are water based paint now which is worse for orange peel and is prone to fading which is why every dealer will sell you some sort of paint protection miracle product with the car so you never have to polish your car again :roll:

 

When polishing your car you remove slight layers of the lacquer, more so when machine polishing than by hand due to the heat and speed that the machines produce. So as you polish away the top so many microns of faded, dull and scratched/swirled lacquer you are revealing new fresh paint underneath and it will look as good as it did when it came out of the showroom.

 

I dont think paint techniques have changed much from days of the corrado to now anyway as i have polished corrados and i have polished new vw/audis and i have always had to do use pretty much the same pad and polish combinations to get similar results. But paint differs a LOT between different manufacturers, for example VW/Audi paint is very hard and takes a long time and a hard polish to do anything, where as at the other end of the scale Japanese paint is like butter, you could generally get as good results by hand (with sore arms!) as by machine because its so soft.

 

I will happily come and show you my paint boostmonkey (sure you said you wanted me to come down your way anyway? :lol:) to prove all this! And when you are finished project PLUM i would also happily polish yours for ya ... for a small fee :D

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Thats called Orange Peel,

 

 

My girlfriend's dad used to work for Mercedes in the paint shop and he said Mercedes are very particular about their peel :lol: Seriously... They have peel charts and standards to adhere to and any car that doesn't have the correct peel standard, gets repainted! Usually in a paint shop in the country of the car's destination.

 

Obviously the S class, CL and SL for instance has a much finer grade of peel compared with the C200s, but interestingly, they all had to have peel. Even if the paint was totally flat and perfect, it had to be redone to the correct peel standards. Madness.

 

It's also amazing how many 'brand new' Mercs he had respray. A lot of them used to come in off the boats beaten up with dinged panels and broken glass. Obviously the customers never knew their factory fresh CLK was in fact on it's second coat of paint :lol:

[Goldie 2]

I really wouldnt say mine was mint and ultimately mine will end up going in for a respray but all in good time. Id really like to get my slam panel repainted in the mean time as the strip under the lights has taken the brunt over the years, im not complaining though as my bonnet is suprisingly good..

 

I think what Rob is saying is that detailing is the process of making the best of what we have, my paint is no spring chicken and neither is his but with some care and quality products/cloths etc etc then it can come up very well.

[herisites 0]

Obviously the S class, CL and SL for instance has a much finer grade of peel compared with the C200s, but interestingly, they all had to have peel. Even if the paint was totally flat and perfect, it had to be redone to the correct peel standards. Madness.

 

I think i remember reading somewhere that orange peel is done on purpose as its protects the paint more or something :scratch: will look into it!

[herisites 0]

I think what Rob is saying is that detailing is the process of making the best of what we have, my paint is no spring chicken and neither is his but with some care and quality products/cloths etc etc then it can come up very well.

 

Exactly! Not saying my paint is better than those that have had resprays at all as its still 12 year old paint, but with the right attention it comes up bloody well!!

[Kevin Bacon 5]

I've always been happy with "clean for it's age" personally.

 

To me, a car that is too mint is a liability, which is why I'm putting off a respray until it is absolutely necessary.

 

A car that looks fantastic from a reasonable distance, but not quite perfection close up is a much better daily proposition for me. So long as a car has no obvious bad dents, rust or clouds of blue smoke, I'm happy.

 

I'd probably spend a weekend detailing a car that was perfect, but when doing it on my car, it doesn't have the same appeal when you come up against scratches and chips on every panel. So it just gets a good wax once a year to protect it and that's pretty much it!

 

If I had an E type..... then I'd be fondling it's sensual curves every weekend without fail.

 

My cloth's arrive by the way (same as shauns on 1st page) and they're quite cosy :lol: Too good to wipe a car with tbh.

 

Rob, I think orange peel is a visual indicator of the correct paint thickness. If the paint is completely flat, I think that's a sign it's too thick. I can't remember the symptoms of it being too thin.

[Andy665 0]

IIRC orange peel is now a bigger problem than it used to be because of the switch to water based paints. Volkswagen paint seems worse than many other manufacturers although the Jetta and Golf estate seems not be as bad - seems odd that the Mexican built cars seem to have better paintwork.

 

I'm with you on the paintwork Kev - my C is 17 years old and is far from perfect but I'm proud of the fact that its 90% original paint - it will be resprayed at some point in the distant future but a few marks and stonechips adds to its character rather than detracts from it. Keeping it as clean as possible is helping me delay a respray for as long as possible.

[herisites 0]

To me, a car that is too mint is a liability, which is why I'm putting off a respray until it is absolutely necessary.

 

A car that looks fantastic from a reasonable distance, but not quite perfection close up is a much better daily proposition for me. So long as a car has no obvious bad dents, rust or clouds of blue smoke, I'm happy.

 

I have the same thoughts, i love cleaning/polishing my car but im not saying its perfect at all, the front end is a state with stone chips and it has the odd little rust bubble and scuff on the bumpers etc but like you say at a distance or sitting in the garage with the flourescent lights on etc it looks MINT which is the way i like it. If i paid £5k+ for a respray i would screw when it got stone chips etc, same reason why i wouldnt want to buy a brand new car (and for the depreciation reasons obviously!)

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Resprays cost silly money now! I remember 10 years ago taking my rolling MK1 shell down to the body shop and paying £500 for a 'blow over' :lol: I stripped it all down completely myself and they flatted it down and painted it.

 

Now you're looking at around £2500 for a 'blow over' and £4500+ for a full, strip down and bare metal repaint!

 

Yeah brand new cars don't really make sense as a private owner any more. Why pay £21K for a new MK5 GTI, when 2.5 - 3 years down the line it's worth £12K and had all it's recall stuff done already? Nobody ever stops in the street and points at brand new cars any more because they're 10 a penny through company and private lease schemes. So where's the stigma in buying a still current model that's a few years old? Makes sense to me :lol:

[StormchargedVR6 0]

Think i will blow mine over before Ultimate Dubs 09 , theres a few marks :lol: