Paint "hardness"?

[Prairie360]

Folks,

I've been hearing allot lately about the "hardness" of the paint various manufacturers are using. On my 2002 Ford Thunderbird, I was told that domestic paints are considered moderate in hardness where many foreign cars use softer paints. This year Mercedes is said to be using a new hard "scratch-resistant" ceramic based clear coat paint. Can anyone shine any light on this?
I've used my PC 7424, M83 followed by M80 on my rear deck lid. Got most of the swirls and light scratches out, but I'm wondering how much I can go, having worked the area for about an hour. It's a work in progress and I'm going to finish the rest of the car next weekend.
I topped the finished area with NTX liquid and competitor's carnauba wax.
Pics coming. I didn't think the car could look any better until now.
Now all you can see is "Wow!".

[Mike Phillips]

Re: Paint "hardness"?

You know, here's the big picture...

It's really a bad idea to "generalize" what makes and models have hard paint or soft paint because the truth is you or anyone else reading this is never going to know how hard or soft your car's paint is until you go out into your garage and work on it. It helps to have a lot of experience polishing the paint on other cars so you have something to reference or compare to as far as personally knowing if you're having great difficulty removing defects or if the process is pretty easy.

Generalized statements about specific makes, models or manufactures will never hold true because manufactures change paint systems, change process and procedures and some cars have been repainted.

The truth is, all that stuff is just talk, the only thing that matters is when --> you <-- go out into --> your garage <-- and work on your car.

For years and years I would read post by all the so called detailing experts and gurus on places like Autopia and Corvetteforum post about how soft clear coats are, (for years), then as we entered into the online discussion forum world and started correcting that bad information and educating people on the fact that most modern clear coats are harder, not softer than traditional single stage paints, well after a few years now this is finally being parroted all over the online world. People, even "Gurus" confuse Scratch-Sensitive with paint being soft and this is simply not true, hard paints still scratch easy, just walk down a row of cars at any large parking lot and inspect the clear coat finishes on a wide spectrum of cars and you'll not a majority of them are scratched and swirled-out. The only cars that are not swirled and scratched are either brand new, recently repainted, or professional detailed.

If you're getting the swirls and scratches out of your car's finish with the dual action polisher and some M80 Speed Glaze, then your lucky and this doesn't mean your car's paint is soft, it just means it's workable to the degree that you, your choice of pad and products and your skill level and technique are able to remove the below surface defects.

Pay less attention to the words and ideas about paint hardness and softness and pay more attention to your car in your garage when you're working on it.

Suffice to say, some clear coats are so soft you can't hardly wipe them without instilling a scratch and some clear coats are so hard the only way to remove a swirl or scratch is with a rotary buffer. If your car falls somewhere in-between these two extremes, then you're luck. Have fun working on you car because working on paint in the extreme ends of the paint hardness or softness spectrum is never any fun.

Hope this helps...

[Prairie360]

Re: Paint "hardness"?

Whoa, thank you Mike! Yes that helped a great deal.
Another great answer, from the Master himself. I'm honored.
Your suggestions and the Meguiar's products themselves have turned my car from "Wow, nice car!" to "Whoa awesome car, mister!".

If you ever do a class in the New York, Long Island area, please let me know. I'm sure many of the members of our T-Bird club would attend a class.

Thanks again,

Sal

[Bird03]

Re: Paint "hardness"?

Hi Sal,

Glad to see you're posting here. I don't post very much, but have learned a lot from the site.

When I saw how easily my red Bird developed swirls, I thought that the clearcoat must be very soft. But when I had great difficulty removing the swirls with a PC (I had to go to the next step and graduate to a rotary), I thought that the clearcoat must be very hard.

Now I just think that the clearcoat is hard, but very scratch sensitive.

I second your request for a detailing clinic up here in the Northeast and have been waiting for a long time for one to show up here.

[cmd]

Re: Paint "hardness"?

mike are you here