Hal

For those of you who aren't familiar, orange peel is the rippling that you see in your paintjob. The surface of the paint is smooth, but underneath, the layers have little ripples that disrupt the light as it reflects. So, you don't get a perfectly mirror-like reflection.

On my current car, I've had the paintjob sanded down and the ripples are far less evident than.. say.. the side of a brand new G35 that I saw last week.

Has anyone had a chance to compare the Acura factory paint job to other companies? Do you know how many coats are applied? I also wonder if anyone has had anything done to reduce the orange peel on their car yet.

I must say, it adds to the reflective properties of the car. If you want your car to look like a show car, I hear that you repaint with about 12 coats and sand/buff off the top 7.

BrandHdriver

Hal,

My experience with the '04 TL I own so far is that the amount of orange peel in the paint is typical for mass-manufactured cars - there is a "bunch" of orange peel in the paint.

I use Zaino polish on my paint, and although I can get the gloss on my paint to a very high level, when you look at reflections of straight lines in the car's paint, they're jagged (or wavy) due to the orange peel. I have SSM paint color.

I'd love to reduce the orange peel in the paint, but I don't plan to spend anything to get rid of it on a daily-driven car. One person on this site suggested that successive coats of Zaino will reduce orange peel, but I don't buy that reasoning.

Someday, I plan to have an extra car, my "ice cream" car, that will have a custom mirror-finish paint job with Zaino bringing the gloss to a still-wet look. It will probably be an older Porsche turbo, not an Acura though.

Hey, if you find any successful (and cheap) ways to reduce orange peel, let us know!

JetJock

Most cars today seem to have a small ammount of orange peel in the paint. This is not a defect, but just part of any mass produced paint job, no matter how good the paint, there is always going to be some orange peel in the paint unless it's a custom paint job, sanded down between multiple coats of laquer paint that just isn't done with most cars except Rolls Royce and Bently which use up to 12 coats of paint, sanded between coats and costs a lot of money. My 04 TL has a pretty good paint job for a production car, and I have no complaints about the quality of the finish. I don't think that is much you could do to reduce orange peel since sanding would remove most of the clear coat and reduce the protection afforded by that clear coat. Just put multiple coats of wax or Zaino, and it should look pretty good. I'm happy with my car's finish.

Hal

Thanks for the input so far.

rstark

I'm not noticing much orange peel in my TL. I'm pretty happy with the paint. I agree about the G35, the one I previously owned had a horrible amount of orange peel. I don't think I've seen any car that was worse than the G35.

orange_peel

Any decent bodyshop painter with a few years experience and good equipment (i.e., clean air supply, good paint gun (DeVilbiss or Sata)) can get a finish that is far superior to the oem finish. The oem paint quality varies from plant to plant. The TL finish is better than most - but if you go to a car dealer, you'll see a great deal of variability- even among cars from Marysville.

Flanagan

When I went car shopping with my grandmother last year, we went to Infiniti, Acura, and Lexus. Let me tell you, I said someting about the orange peel on the ES330 to the Lexus salesman. It was terrible. You could see it from a good 20 feet away on the trunk and roof, and it was noticeable on the sides and hood. You could even feel the ripples with your fingers on the trunk. I had never seen such a terrible paint job this side of Maaco. He didn't know what I was talking about, then he saw it and said he would "look into it". The Infinitis were much better, but Acura was the best overall IMO. Some models were better than others (e.g. G35<M45<Q45 and NSX<RSX<TL), and the Q45 had the best paint of any car we looked at that day, but Acura was more consistent.

kilrb

I waxed my silver TL a couple of weekends back, and I only noticed a few (maybe 4 or 5) spots where there appeared to be an imperfection under the clear coat. I'm glad I saw this post. I didn't realize you see that sort of thing normally. They were very small, and you have to be very close up to see them, so they don't bother me.

gregory28

I love my TL, but the paint job is definitely inferior to my friend's BMW's and my old Volvo. I have a paint chip already; I've never had a paint chip before.

kilrb

Seriously?

JetJock

A paint chip is not caused by orange peel, or paint for that matter...it's caused by rocks etc. hitting the paint and damaging it. Lately, all cars have softer paint because of recent EPA regulations that require lead to be removed from the paint. That makes the paint softer, and less resistant to chipping. I think the paint quality of my Acura is pretty good, sure it could be better, but I'm happy so far. My last car was NBP, and it was a horror story with swirl marks, acid rain spotting etc. That is the last black car I'll ever buy. They are pretty nice looking when clean and polished, but just too many headaches for me.