How not to wetsand your car. - Turbo-Owners.com

Wolfe · 04-17-2008, 09:28 AM

well, I did a fresh pearl paint job on my 240 a couple weeks ago, you can check it out in my garage.
Being a single stage enamel I decided to spray it on real thick to give me a lot of opportunity to wetsand to a glass like finish.
Its amazing how much paint you can put on a car. 11 coats, you would not think its so thick, but by hand it took me 4 hours to wet sand the front fender to perfection, starting at 600 and finishing to 3000 then a light touch with the buffing wheel and its perfect.

Its amazing how perfect it turned out, I sat and marveled at how good it looked, then I looked at the rest of the car. Orange peel, more orange peel than in a florida orchard. The fact that the car is orange almost made it worse. At 4 hours per body pannel there was no way my ADD ass was going to finish this car in the next year let alone before this coming Monday. You see, Monday, is vinyl day, and the car has to be showroom ready.

So my dilema, how to get it done fast and good, or at least good enough.
Obvious answer, orbital sander, or in bodyshop terms a D.A.

I have one of those, I use it for doing woodwork around the house.
Now many of you are going "IDK MY BFF JILL?" right now.
First may I remind you that orbitals for woodworking are powered by electricity, not air like a automotive D.A. is.

But I am thinking what the heck, I will use an extention cord. (if you have not figured this out yet go back and re read the title)

Well, things went really smooth (get it? thats a sanding joke) i was using a water jug to dump water on the paint with one hand and then using the orbital with the other with some 600. In fact it went so well I decided to take a break as I had already completed the drivers door and rear quarter in 3 hours. PB&J and milk down the hatch (orange paint doesn't taste half as bad as pb blaster does, yes I forgot the gloves again) and I was back to work.

Electricity is a interesting thing. Its wierd how you can be using it one second and everything is fine, but when you flip that switch again...well, lets just say that if you have been dumping water on a car and its puddeling on the floor of your garage and your holding a wet electric sander in hand with your sock covered feet standing in said puddles of water...well, all I needed was a running video camera and to say "hey yall watch this" to end up on americas funniest, Or to end up as a reciepiant of a darwin award.

Lets just say that you, don't need to be a genius to realise that if your hands and feet are tingeling you should probably shut of the electricity. So when the shock hit me, lets say I just stood there, shocked. Thats when I dropped the sander and the lights went out.
No litteraly, I blew a fuse when the sander hit the puddle of water I was standing in on the floor.

I was lucky, no burns, nothing. Just got knocked back about 3 feet and in to my work bench. But I did hit the vice with my shoulder blade.

After unpluging the sander and resetting the fuse. I decided that the automotive air D.A. was going to be the way to go. I have no interest in sporting a Don King hair do. ever.

A short lesson about D.A. sanders. The higher the air pressure the higher the rpms, the higher the rpms the faster it eats the paint off the car, the faster it eats the paint off the car the faster it brings it back down to bare metal.
Good thing I always shoot single stage enamel. Brush it on your mistakes and then wet sand it by hand in 4 hours and you cnat tell its a repair.

So to make a long story not quite so long...I will close this lesson on how not to do things with a mastercard commercial.
orbital sander...$55
D.A. sander......$110
repainting sections of your car.....$14 and 12 hours of labor.
Not being dead and being able to joke about your being a friggin idiot later.....
Priceless.

helloween · 04-17-2008, 01:40 PM

lol nice write up

Voodoo · 04-17-2008, 03:46 PM

I love how most forums have "HOW TO" sections, whereas this forum seems to have developed a "HOW NOT TO" theme. Perhaps there should be a section for these?