Wet Sanded My Sorento Part 1.

[MirrorFinish]

Hi Chaps.
Well here is my car in May starting to detail the Sorento and getting the paint corrected. As you may or not know most cars I did on full corrections got wet sanded. Seems pointless to me taking off all that clear to remove swirls if you don't at least take off the peaks of the peel and polish out. Really takes no more time and in fact is faster.

So here we have my 2006 Kia Sorento EX, this car had lived in Florida till the owner moved to Texas. Luckily he bought it new and worked for Kia so had everything done to it and I bought it with 3 years warranty left. So far the car is great except it's passion for fuel; 17 mpg is its diet.

I started it in May then it too hot to carry on, it was 50c in the garage so this is the first part and have started again this week which will be part two. I decided to sand off the pin stripe this week as well.

I did not go for a complete flat panel so some peel may still appear but I think this is a great turnaround from a car that only got washed in a car wash. Time taken per panel from wet sand to final refining was about an hour, just goes to show it does not take days to correct a car.

Car will have two coats of CQuartz applied once finished.

A few pics.....



Plenty of Orange Peel. Yuk and there was a lot of swirls as well.




Started flatting with 2000 grit paper, paint readings were about 180um across the car except the boot lid that was 400um so some care would be taken there.






Most of the rear end flatted. Paint readings were about 175um by now.







As I said |I did not go bananas on total flatness but this is a great improvement, started the bonnet.



Nasty Scratches.





And thats it for now, Part 2 will be the finish as has cooled down to 90f so |I can apply the CQuartz.

[hernandez.art13]

Cool good job, so you wet sanded to remove the orange peel? The AGO is not working so having some trouble ere

What are you going to buff it out with, and what grit are you going to go up to?

Good Luck and looking forward to the finished results.



Art

[KillaCam]

Are you saying it took an hour to sand and compound/polish that entire car? And I think you have a typo where you said there was 400 µm on the rear. Maybe you meant 40?

[ken tuep]

It took him an hour per panel. Which is about right for panels this size. Except the Hood, I'd guess.

You did a really good job. Looks better than when new.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using AG Online

[FUNX650]

Thanks for posting this wet-sanding article.

It looks like all other OEM's should take the cue from Kia of America's application processes in
the amount of paints/coatings that are applied to Sorentos in their paint kitchens.
I've said it before: 7 mils of total films-build is unheard of in this day and age!!


-It appears the amount of the top-coat paint-film (CC) that you state you removed (~.2 mils)
is well within the OEM's stated "acceptable range".

However...And with your following statement:

As you may or not know most cars I did on full corrections got wet sanded.
Seems pointless to me taking off all that clear to remove swirls if you don't at least take off the peaks of the peel and polish out.
Really takes no more time and in fact is faster.

I wonder why you stopped here:

I did not go for a complete flat panel so some peel may still appear

...in the wet-sanding process:...
especially if the paint was as thick (175-180 microns) as you previously stated it to be!


Can't wait to see Part II.

Bob

[MirrorFinish]

Thanks guys, bl flat panel I mean getting the panel totally flat, say 140um on all the panel, I have different readings across the panels which most people cant see but I can see in good light a slight, it can take a week to totally flat a car.

I used 2000, 2500 then 3000 grit papers then polished back with wool and and Meg's 105 then polished and refined.

The boot lid reads 400 as it has been respreyed and was not a good job, I'll have to see how it comes out.

[Wheelzntoys]

Welcome to US! Great job!