Paint Hardness Chart?

[Hunter09]

Wow, I was thinking about this the other day. I have a client scheduled for a correction. A new Suzuki Kizashi. I never corrected Suzuki paint and have not found any discussion about the hardness of their paint. I was thinking that having a chart of manufactures, years, and general paint hardness would be wonderful. We would have to compile a list from our experiences working with these paints to come to a general conclusion before making the chart. I would be willing to make the chart based upon AGO forum members comments.

-Sparty

How was the paint on the Suzuki?

[Mike Phillips]

ive often wondered about this...

whats better for detailing? soft or hard?

Good question. The answer is somewhere in the middle of both extremes...

Not to soft, not to hard.

• Not so soft that even wiping with a clean microfiber towel can inflict swirls and scratches.

• Not so hard that it's difficult for the average person to remove swirls and scratches by machine.

Most clear coats are too hard for the "average" person to remove swirls and scratches by hand. Working by hand takes more talent, skill and experience than working even with the simplest of tools the PC style DA Polisher.


Good luck creating this chart and have more fun updating and maintaining it. Keep in mind any car that's been wrecked and repainted, or portions have been repainted won't be addressed, nor will cars that have custom paint jobs. Like this custom paint job on a Bugatti getting buffed out by Robert DiTerlizzi if Impressions Detailing.

This isn't the factory paint... I wonder if it's hard or soft?

[panthercz]

******* This sounds like a great tip. BMWs are notorious for rock chips. Makes sense.

Just keep in mind that Jet Black BMW paint is very soft, all others seem pretty hard.

[Impressions]

Agree on jet black BMW!
As far as a list, good lick with that!
This is why we do test spots. It's easy to grab the most aggressive product and pads and get results.
The more cars you perform correction on the better you'll get at it.
Even after thousands of cars there will sometimes be one that stumps you and you can bet on that!

[statusdetailing]

It's weird, I feel like over the past couple years I've gained the ability to somewhat judge a paints hardness by just looking at it and examining it. Rock chips are a sign as are certain types of scuffs and scratches and swirls. Somebody mentioned that BMWs have hard paint, I feel like a lot of Audis have hard paint as well.

Does anybody else have a sense of being able to visibly judge a vehicle's paint hardness? Regaurdless, I still do a test spot on almost every car, unless it's a car I've done a million times.

[fightnews]

Too many variables and paint technology is continually changing...

Everyone should be doing a "Test Spot" anytime they're working on a car they've never worked on before and following the philosophy of using the least aggressive product to get the job done.

It takes experience to be able to test paint and know if it's hard or soft and you can only get that by buffing out a lot of cars.

I have a very good thread on this in the "Hot Topics" forum on MOL, here's the link,

Paint Workability - The Hardness or Softness of your car's paint

"You don't how hard or soft your paint is until you go out into your garage and work on your car"

hi mike any truth to what this guy said? its not the first time ive heard it...

One way you can usually tell if a car has hard paint by seeing if the front area has lots of rock chips. Hard paint tends to chip where as soft paint may just pit or nothing at all.

[986DTM]

Found this on another forum. B column is hard, C column is medium, D column is soft.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...0BU/edit#gid=0