Did you just pick up your car from the paint job and are amazed on how great it looks? But then you started to really look at the paint and you notice there’s some type of texture to the paint?
It almost looks like the skin of an orange. Whelp, unfortunately, that’s a very common problem when cars get a new paint job. Note that this isn’t a bad problem, it just means you’ll need a little bit more work to get it perfect.
I’ll be covering what orange peel is, why it happens, and what you can do about it to truly get an almost flawless finish on your paint.
What Is Orange Peel?
To put simple, during the painting process at the paint shop, the painters will add the last coat of clear coat. Your paints shine comes clear coat on the paint.
The paint process would look like this: Base coat > paint > clear coat
When the car is painted at the manufacturer or paint shop, they often times will not sand the clear coat to give it a “flat” surface look.
So orange peel is too much clear coat on your paint. This is not to get confused with the swirls and scratches that can happen on your paint. These are two completely different areas of paint care.
Many people don’t like orange peel because it makes the paint look distorted and fuzzy. People always want to remove the orange peel… Until they find out how much work is involved.
How To Remove Orange Peel
So now you want to know how to remove the orange peel so you can have an amazing paint job? Well, it sure isn’t a quick fix… Nor can the average person just give it a go on the first try and be successful.
Like I mentioned, removing swirls and scratches and orange peel are completely different from each other. They are two different animals that require much different skills.. and tools and products.
Where swirls and scratches can be removed by a buffer, pads, and a few compound and polishes. Removing orange peel will require for you to wetsand the clear coat. Which can go south very fast.
You are removing a lot more clear coat at a much faster rate when you wet sand. One small move and you can completely remove all the clear coat which will look VERY noticeable.
If this would be your first time doing any type of wet sanding, I would highly recommend that you don’t do it. The risk is not worth the reward. Because even if you did the smallest error and burned through the clear coat on a panel, you would need to get that entire panel repainted- not just the isolated spot.
Depending on how much orange peel and how many panels it has it on, it can be a pretty long process. Maybe a two day job minimum if you know what you’re doing.
And the last part is you have to buy a lot of tools and products. Which can add up for a few hundred dollars if you know what you’re looking for.