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Getting rid of OEM Orange Peel

scrapin240

Drag Racing Champion
Location
IzzaGolf
Car(s)
Golf
Any suggestions on how to get rid of the OEM Orange peel? It's really only on my doors, but it's annoying to see after about 4 hours of laboring.
 

PouncingPanzer1

Go Kart Champion
My car was covered in it down both sides. I did a two step compound on my car at 1100 miles in attempts to reduce it, then had a ceramic coating sprayed on heavily to level the clear coat. It reduced it by about 1/2 i'd say. Still visible though.

A PPF film would probably be a good way also, albeit expensive. Where I have clear bra looks much better then areas I do not in terms of smoothness and clarity.
 

scrapin240

Drag Racing Champion
Location
IzzaGolf
Car(s)
Golf
My car was covered in it down both sides. I did a two step compound on my car at 1100 miles in attempts to reduce it, then had a ceramic coating sprayed on heavily to level the clear coat. It reduced it by about 1/2 i'd say. Still visible though.

A PPF film would probably be a good way also, albeit expensive. Where I have clear bra looks much better then areas I do not in terms of smoothness and clarity.

Thanks. I was afraid that I'll have to live with it for the most part :(
 

Ton

Go Kart Newbie
Location
U.S.
My golf is one of the smoothest paint cars I've ever had. But I see other golfs with more peel though. Maybe some colors are harder to paint in the factory.
 

VancouverGTI1

Passed Driver's Ed
Location
Vancouver, BC
You could purchase 3m's trizac system with 3000 & 5000 grit sand paper. If you use a orbital sander or even use a polisher with a soft interface pad to do the sanding, the polishing step will be much less labour intensive as there won't be straight line scratches to remove.

But in all honesty, I would not recommend spending the time to wet sand and polish factory paint due to the need for clear coat thickness to prevent UV damage.
 

o_a_ravi

Go Kart Newbie
Location
Phoenix
You could purchase 3m's trizac system with 3000 & 5000 grit sand paper. If you use a orbital sander or even use a polisher with a soft interface pad to do the sanding, the polishing step will be much less labour intensive as there won't be straight line scratches to remove.

But in all honesty, I would not recommend spending the time to wet sand and polish factory paint due to the need for clear coat thickness to prevent UV damage.

Well said, I would not worry much., because everytime you are touching the paint with a sander/buffer/polisher, you are removing .00001 micron of your protective clear coat.
 

jmblur

Autocross Champion
Location
Massachusetts
Car(s)
2017 Golf R
Well said, I would not worry much., because everytime you are touching the paint with a sander/buffer/polisher, you are removing .00001 micron of your protective clear coat.

Completely dependent on what pad and compound you're using. More aggressive abrasives remove more... if that wasn't obvious already.

MOST cars have ~100-150um total paint thickness (depending on panel), with clear being ~33% of that. So, 33-50um of clear coat. If you strike through the clear coat, you're fucked - it's a panel repaint.

Depending on how hard the clearcoat is, compounding with something like Griots BOSS FCC or Meguiars M105 will remove ~3-5 microns PER PASS. So, if you compound an area twice to get full removal of scratches, you're removing 6-10 microns. This could be more than 1/4 of your clear coat on a thin panel!

Orange peel is relatively large, which is why wet sanding is the recommended process for removal. This also means you're removing a lot of material to remove it - figure in the 10-20 micron range. Now, it's unlikely a thinly painted panel will have much orange peel, but you're still talking 20-40% of your clear gone.

In other words - unless this is a show car, I wouldn't bother. The risk outweighs the reward on orange peel. Getting it to 95%, but leaving the orange peel, is probably your best option.
 
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