snowman81

Well, I finally painted them. They came out okay (pics soon, I'm still at work) but I could not get them to look as smooth as the orginal ones. There is still some orange peel visible. I primed, sanded, painted, sanded, clear coat, then attempted to sand, but it took the clear coat off. I had about 3 coats of clear coat on there and wet sanded with 2000 grit paper. Is this normal? I've always thought that you could sand the clear coat and still keep it shiny, but I may have been wrong. So is there any other way to get rid of that orange peel that I have left? Again, pics will be up soon. I should be able to snap some when I get home from work.

Razzi

i painted mine with some vinyl/gloss black paint, and it came out so nasty, there were wrinkles, really really deep and nasty ones, in the paint despite me spraying only very lightly each layer.
what kind of paint did u use?

snowman81

I used Dupli-color primer and clear coat and Krylon gloss black paint.

snowman81

Here is a pic that I borrowed from actright. His door pillars look better than mine did before I painted them, but of course I didn't take before pics because I painted them while I was at work. The after pics will be up this afternoon.

snowman81

Here are the pics I just took. They didn't come out great, but you can still see the orange peel that I was talking about. Anyone have any suggestions?

dnd2984

iTrader: (6)

Wet sand and redo clear again

Razzi

man thats a billion times better than mine, i'll go nab a few pix soon and show u lol

i dunno what the orange peel is, but it sounds like it's the slight orangw tint? if that's the case, try buffing it out with a rubbing compoud, 2.99 at autozone, if it doesnt work, then start from the top lol.

btw, did you remove the pillars when u did it? i tried to remove it via instructions from AZing but i couldnt find what the hell the pictures were pointing at

snowman81

I tried that with one of them the day that I did it and it didn't look any better than before.

snowman81

I also used some rubbing compound on the one on the back door and it didn't do much either. All I noticed was that is was starting to take some of the gloss away.
Orange peel are the little bumps that you see that make it so it's not completely smooth. It looks like it has the same dimples as an orange. I did remove mine, makes it a lot easier. I don't have any pics but all you have to do it pull the weather stripping off that goes around the inside of the door that the window meets up with. Pull that all off and you'll see 3 screws going into the side of the door pillar garnish. Then there is one more, if you open the door and pull back the weather stripping at the top of where the door pillar is on the inside of the door, there is one more screw back there. I don't have any pics, but if you can't get it, let me know and I'll try to snap some.

Billy Sacco

Well as far as I have heard orange peel is usually little specs of dust and whatnot that get caught in the paint while its drying. Unless you have a paint booth might be hard to avoid. They look pretty good to me man. Way better then my weather battered ones are looking. Call me crazy but on certain things I kind of like the orange peel look almost kind of textured. To me they look fine but I know how it is trying to get things perfect.

02TLSfan

I did this a few weeks ago and the same problem, they all have the orange peel, i sanded and cleared 3 or 4 times...maybe I just suck at painting... It still looks better with the slight orange peel than it did before all flaking and chipping. I finally just gave up and put them back on, I was tired of driving around without them on, very noisy and quite ghetto looking. I did what some other members here have done and bought a roll of high gloss vinyl that I will cut and apply in a couple days.

It will be friday at the earliest that I have this done, I have some tests and a programming project due thursday, so I will be working on my car thursday night and all day friday. I'll post some pics friday afternoon of how it turned out and maybe a little DIY for it as well. The vinyl actually seems to match the window trim vinyl so I'm hoping this will turn out well.

dvsxlt247

thats the ripples in the paint. You have to WET SAND, WET SAND, WET SAND, and more WET SAND! lol.

fsttyms1

Thats not orange peel. Orange peel is usually caused by improper painting technique which causes it to flash off faster or laying paint on to heavy. If you have it it can be taken care of simply by wet sanding it till the surface is completely smooth and uniform, then polished.

OK, Ill call you CRAZY. Orange peel is not desired in automotive paint finishes and why would you want a textured look on your car??

fsttyms1

Dont paint sand paint sand etc... Simply paint, get all your coats on then Wetsand your clear smooth and polish.

2000 TL

Hey, did you guys take the pillars off the car or just paint them while on the car?

You painted ones still looks better than my faded ones...

Billy Sacco

Well his door pillers don't look to bad to me. I would not want my whole car painted like that or anything . My buddy just got a lotus and the damn thing has just a hint of ornage peel all over it.

snowman81

I'll try putting a few more coats of clear coat, then wet sand. I was using 2000 grit, is that fine enough or should I get something higher? When I sanded the clear coat before, it took the gloss off, will the polish bring that gloss back?

02TLSfan

I put 3 coats of clear on then sanded, I didn't sand between coats. It still came out crappy, I tried not to put on real heavy coats, every time I tried sanding it seemed to take the clear off though, so I gave up. I guess I just suck at painting, my engine cover looks great but I didn't have to clear that or make it super smooth because its not glossy. I'd rather have it painted, but for now I'll settle for the gloss vinyl because its cheap and I don't have the time for the painting and prepwork.

snowman81

I got some info from this website and it seems like the idea of wetsanding is to get rid of the gloss, then buff it back to a shine. If you read through the whole page, it actually talks about wetsanding an entire vehicle. That's something i won't try anytime soon, but maybe someday I'll hone my wetsanding skills enough to give it a shot.

"The whole idea of wet sanding the entire vehicle is to make it look absolutely flawless. The buffing step is critical to achieving this goal. Having the correct buffing products, pads, and of course skill in buffing, is critical to achieving a perfect finish.
With the entire vehicle totally sanded, it will have no gloss. It will look horrible! The goal now is to buff the finish to perfection, remove every single scratch and mark, so the finish is absolutely perfect. This will take many steps and many hours. Your first goal is to completely remove all the sand scratch marks. Subsequent buffing steps will involve swirl mark removal and polishing for maximum gloss and clarity. You can't be in a hurry in any buffing step or you risk missing some imperfections such as sand scratches, or any other blemish in the paint. It needs to be flawless."

SupaRookie

That's not bad. I may need to do that. My pillar is all scrape up.