Have just done some clearcoat tests. The average thickness of the clearcoatcoated paint was 330 microns - remember this included primer basecoat and clearcoat. This is exceptionally thick, my 'new car' is 130 microns. The bonnet could have been resprayed at some point but it was very uniform all readings within 10% of each other which is very hard to achieve by hand???
Firstly the bonnet was taped off into bite size chunks with a good degree of separation between each square.
Here are the swirls on the bonnet
Next up the rotary was used first to remove swirls using a meguiars polishing pad and ssr2.5. The average thickness before was 345 microns. Two passes at 1500rpm removed most of the swirls but not the spider webbing. Another pass and still spider webbing left. This paint was hard, was a ford bonnet but reminded me of VAG paint.
I then used meguiars #84 on the wool pad and followed this up with another ssr2.5 to remove the swirling and then megs #80 on the pc to finish off to a pretty good finish.
The new reading to achieve a swirl free finish was 337 microns indicating an average of 8 microns had been removed to achieve a swirl free finish. This was well within the safety zone but seemed 'a lot' of paint to remove.
Next up on a different section I tried one pass of the rotary with ssr2.5 but dialed in approxinatly 2200 -2500rpm. The extra heat was enough to fully remove the swirls in one pass:doublesho at only a loss of 3 microns of paint.
On a different section I tried meguairs #80 at two passes with a white 4 inch polishing pad. No meaningful paint removal could be detected using the meter - indeed it appeard to go up by 0.5 micron lol - beyond its level of accuracy at such 'high' thickness readings. From the pic you can still see swirls but a good mprovement.
Next up was 3 passes of ssr2.5 with a 4 inch cuting pad on the pc
Here the paint thickness dropped by 2 microns and a good but still not perfect finish was left.
^^Top half polished lower half not.
Conclusion - swirl removal could be safely undertaken by removing 3-4 microns well within the safety zone of such a thick paint to start with. Mopping the paint and finishing up with lower grades also produced an excellent finish but at the cost of more microns of paint - not important on this test piece but maybe so on your pride and joy?
I also polished the edge for a minute using ssr2.5 and a megs pad and whilst I couldn't do any readings it didn't show any visible sgns of burning through.
Firstly the bonnet was taped off into bite size chunks with a good degree of separation between each square.
Here are the swirls on the bonnet
Next up the rotary was used first to remove swirls using a meguiars polishing pad and ssr2.5. The average thickness before was 345 microns. Two passes at 1500rpm removed most of the swirls but not the spider webbing. Another pass and still spider webbing left. This paint was hard, was a ford bonnet but reminded me of VAG paint.
I then used meguiars #84 on the wool pad and followed this up with another ssr2.5 to remove the swirling and then megs #80 on the pc to finish off to a pretty good finish.
The new reading to achieve a swirl free finish was 337 microns indicating an average of 8 microns had been removed to achieve a swirl free finish. This was well within the safety zone but seemed 'a lot' of paint to remove.
Next up on a different section I tried one pass of the rotary with ssr2.5 but dialed in approxinatly 2200 -2500rpm. The extra heat was enough to fully remove the swirls in one pass:doublesho at only a loss of 3 microns of paint.
On a different section I tried meguairs #80 at two passes with a white 4 inch polishing pad. No meaningful paint removal could be detected using the meter - indeed it appeard to go up by 0.5 micron lol - beyond its level of accuracy at such 'high' thickness readings. From the pic you can still see swirls but a good mprovement.
Next up was 3 passes of ssr2.5 with a 4 inch cuting pad on the pc
Here the paint thickness dropped by 2 microns and a good but still not perfect finish was left.
^^Top half polished lower half not.
Conclusion - swirl removal could be safely undertaken by removing 3-4 microns well within the safety zone of such a thick paint to start with. Mopping the paint and finishing up with lower grades also produced an excellent finish but at the cost of more microns of paint - not important on this test piece but maybe so on your pride and joy?
I also polished the edge for a minute using ssr2.5 and a megs pad and whilst I couldn't do any readings it didn't show any visible sgns of burning through.
