I started wet sanding my maverick today to rid it of some of the orange peel. Bodyline up is in decent condition but has quite a bit of swirl marks and etc. The paint is "wavy" but not terrible. Bodyline down (rocker panel area) is like it was sprayed with textured paint My process so far has been wet sanding with meguirs 1500, then follow up with 3000. I have the entire meguiars kit for polishing and the buffer/pads. Questions; Can I move to 1000 grit to help knock down the rather rough lower section or do I run a huge risk of rubbing through? I assume it has less paint than the upper portion as that is why it is so rough. Will I ever get rid of the wavyness of the paint or is a bright color just going to have that? I sand it smoothe and it still seems "wavy" I suppose is the word. Is this just how it is going to live? I am doing it all by hand to get a good feel for it.
I will sometimes start with 600 grit first. Just have to check progress more often, or you can sand through.
The courser the paper the flatter the paint. I start with 800, then go 1000, then 1200, then 1500, then 2000 followed by 3m Trizact 3000. Unbelievably flat after that. Or at least as flat as the body work underneath. Stay away from all edges with the paper or you could easily sand through. If you are starting with 1500 you will never get it flat. It will just float over the waves. Be patient.
I am being extremely overly patient with the project, I think I need to drop down to 800-1000 grit. I am going to try to post some pictures.
As you can see I started color sanding the spots that never really got any love on the car, trying to make it a bit nicer, going over the entire car just to take down some imperfections and make it shine again. ^That was after the 1500-3000-2 passes with correction compound-1 pass with finish compound, need one more pass with a foam pad See the wavy orange peel look in the last picture in the reflections? The paint is completely smoothe.
Maguiars Diamond cut compound works very well and reduces some of the wet sanding since it starts out aggressive and breaks down into a polish as it's worked. As mentioned prior though.. stay away from the edges with that particular compound. At least until it's been worked a bit and has broken down into a polish.
It looks like the wavyness is beyond the paint and partially due to not block sanding the primer enough I suppose. I will just live with it. It is looking tons better.
