Cars Paint Hardness

[maiku]

Most Mercedes I've come across are hard. Ceramic clear coat is generally used on Mercedes.
Both of my Honda's are soft. My g/f's Nissan Xterra is mildly soft. Maybe slightly medium.
And as someone said before, Honda/Acura are the same so can be labeled accordingly.

[TOGWT]

There are many veriables to consider when compiling such a list i.e. -

Hard / Soft Clear Coats:
Each vehicle assembly plant uses different clear coat paint from one of three major paint suppliers; PPG, DuPont, and BASF products and each of these companies have a range of several differing paints

1. Some vehicle manufacturers have more than one plant assembling the same model of a vehicle; each plant will often use a different supplier for the clear coat paints.
2. Each assembly plant may elect to use one of several OEM paints from PPG, DuPont or BASF clear coat product lines.
3. There are other factors that will have an effect on a clear coat composition; oven drying time, temperature, the relevant age (i.e. how long ago was the paint applied) spot panel repairs (refinish) that are carried out either at the assembly plant or the rail head or port of entry. Each of these variables will affect the hardness or softness of clear coat paint

This is also true of imports assembled in the US; usually one paint supplier is approved for all plants; however each plant may modify the application/bake process in order to meet production demand. This may also affect which has the harder or softer clear.

Diagnosis is the key, not guess work; before deciding on what products to use ascertain the paint surface conditions - Paint thickness, New or Aged, Single stage or Clear coat, Oxidized, Soft or Hard or CeramiClear etc choose a panel and test your proposed foam pad / polish / machine speed process. Once you are satisfied that this process will give you the finish required, proceed to polish the rest of the paint surface. The more abrasive combination you have to use to see results, the harder the paint.

Using the least aggressive pad / polish combination followed, if necessary by an incrementally more aggressive approach until you find what works.

• Hard paint - does not mar as easily, but it's more difficult to polish surface defects.
• Soft paint- is very easy to polish out surface defects, but easier to induce surface marring.

In general Japanese cars have soft paint; European cars (Audi having the hardest, BMW next, and VW similar to BMW) Porsche have extremely soft paint usually. American cars are very random, even for the same make, model, and year (except for GM Corvette, which is extremely hard).

There are exceptions to the rule, with cars having seemingly soft paint but being difficult to correct, and the so called ‘sticky’ clear coat (the clear wasn’t fully cured before the application of a protective plastic
(i.e. Permaguard)

Single stage paint is softer than a colour coat with a clear coat; the hardness of single stage paints is due to the colour pigmentation, single stage white is very hard, while single stage black is very soft. Clear coat hardness will also vary.As always generalizing carries a degree of risk as a panel(s) may have been re-painted

[nrengle]

I love your posts TOGWT!

[michael k]

Originally Posted by nrengle

I love your posts TOGWT!

X2

[waxandshine]

The list as said isnt exact, is probable, like you said, cars are sent to different plants and there are factors to consider, but as you also said, there is a common generalising, ie. bmw, audi, vw have hard paint, also from reading other posts, newer lexus black cars are only single stage surprisingly, this is what the list is for, a general idea to give to readers