Well thanks to this forum I have my 67 FB painted now. It turned our great. I sprayed 1 coat sealer, 3 coats color, (Pro Spray) silver metallic and 3 coats of clear, universal clear (SPI). It all went well and now I am color sanding to get the small orange peal texture out of the clear. I noticed that as I am sanding the clear with 1200 to start with, that it is pretty smooth but there is still some small dots of orange peel scattered around no matter how much I sand. I guess I could just keep sanding but I want to leave some clear for the buffing stage.

My question is how much of the little low areas can I leave and still get a good color sanded finish? I am trying to get a good "Driver" finish not a show car finish.
I am guessing that some of the small un-sanded clear orange peel dotted areas just go away when it is buffed. Is that right.
Thanks
EB

You have to sand it flat before you start with the compound. Compound will do very little cutting. If it is there now after sanding it will still be there when finished polishing.

If you're saying no matter how much you sand the area that you're assuming to be orange peel, the dot still appears to be there, there is a good chance it may be a fish eye. Why don't you try to take a picture of it and show us exactly what it looks like before you continue to sand off clear.

Okay, I will give just a little background. I was in the USAF during Vietnam and was in corrosion control which means I painted things. I painted jets, jeeps and heavy equipment. I painted hundreds of things during my 6 years in the service. I say this just to let you know that I know what orange peel is and what fish eye is. This is orange peel.
I called SPI today and they told me I had the gun PSI too low. This means I did not lay down as much clear as I thought I did. So what I am going to do is scuff it up and put two more coat of clear on it. One of those being a flow coat.
In the USAF we did not worry about orange peel or color sanding, we just did camouflaged and get it ready to fly. Not a lot of block sanding.
So now my question is what grit sandpaper should I use to scuff the surface before re-coating.
Thanks for your feed back.
EB

ejb wrote:
If re-clearing, I use 800 on a DA with an interface pad and a grey scotch brite pad for edges and body lines.

600-800 will work fine. Be carefull not to burn through the clear coat.

i DA back with P400 never had an issue and it cuts back any orange peel better than the finer grades ,for difficult areas i use an ocsilating sander not a rotory duel action ,a Fein multitop to be exact with a 3" Velcro smart repair DA pad fitted ,for edges i use a soft interface,the Fein gives far more control and is ideal for localised denibs ,it will also sand under door latches etc where a DA cant get to ,i also use compound heads on it for those areas

as for wetsanding then P600 is ideal for clear and other 2K solid finishes

Paul

I have a new sort of add on question. After I sanded the hood and deck lid I laid out the stripes and painted them on today. Tomorrow morning I will re-clear the hood, deck lid and spoiler. When I pulled the thin tape off that I used to lay out the stripes, in one 6" long area the tape left some sticky residue from the tape.
So my question is can I just use wax and grease remover and clean that of without hurting the base coat as the base coat stripes have no clear on them yet.

Also I continued to sand a little more with 1000 and then 2000 on the orig. clear coat and it is coming out fine with out having to re-coat the whole car again.
Thanks to everyone on this.
EB

I have used wax and grease remover on fresh basecoat numerous times without any issues. I dont think you should have any issue.

I've used it before and never had an issue. R-M 909 is a waterborne cleaner and works well for that use as well.