Oops polished through an edge on the door of my GTO. Advice would be appreciated

roger1

roger1

Member
Here's a photo of it:

j6kP4fA.jpg


This is SPI dark red with 4 coats of universal clear. The primer you see in the buff through is red epoxy. I sprayed this car all the way back in December of 2021 and am just completing the sanding and buffing of it all now. So this is fully cured clear I would presume. Anybody think I might be able
to use an airbrush (I have a Paasche) and somehow spray a little base and then clear and make this undetectable or at least almost undetectable?

Or, am I going to have to remove the hardware back off the door, sand the whole door with 600, blend a bit of base and re-clear the door with 4 more coats?
 
Yeah, I guess I do. But I thought I'd ask since I knew you guys would give me the hard truth if that was the only way to get it looking the way it should.
What I didn't say is I did it to the other door too in pretty much the same spot. Doggone it. I need to be more careful.
Thanks and Happy 4th!
 
You could use the airbrush for the basecoat if you wanted. Personally I would be thrilled that it was just the door and not the quarter. I had a plumber here a while back with a group of helpers, one of them nicked the quarter of a 70 GTO we're doing without saying anything, now I get to reclear the quarters and roof.
 
Having to do both doors doesn't seem that much worse than having to do just one but I'd hate to have to do the quarters again even though mine is a convertible. I've finished both quarters and the rear window to deck lid panel and all is good is good with those luckily. I still have the hood and fenders to do but I'm going to try and be more careful around edges. At this point I might as well finish up all the rest of the polishing before going back to re-clear the doors.
 
Doors are the easiest as far as surface area and masking difficulty, imo. Could be worse!
Agree on finishing the polishing, though it's sometimes best to stop at the 1st step since you might have to deal with trace amounts of overspray which would necessitate returning to the 1st step in any case. It's unlikely that 2nd or 3rd steps will result in rub-throughs unless something goes terribly wrong.
 
I don't often tape edges, but that's because we typically do the first polishing step before assembly, and where we do not, there hasn't been a whole lot of sanding so there's a lot of film thickness. I think it pays to be careful with material removal near edges. On custom jobs, we do sand flat near edges (against some advice) but we only do it with super fine grits that take only a quick rotary swipe with heavy compound to resolve. Using only super fine grits near edges gives up some ultimate quality as they don't sand as flat, but it's an acceptable compromise imo.
 
I may have some of that tape. I better do that from now on.
Good thought on the door edge molding but I don't think I'd like the look of having them on there.
 
texasking said:
Tape those edges, damage saves a lot of time. Old 3M 218 works great.
Click to expand...

I've never been able to tape edges, the tape on the edge drove me crazy when the buffer would go over it. I get the safety factor but it wasn't something that ever worked for me.

The biggest thing that helped me was using guide coat when sanding to make sure I didn't over sand things and have a thin spot before I even started buffing.
 
Chad.S said:
I've never been able to tape edges, the tape on the edge drove me crazy when the buffer would go over it. I get the safety factor but it wasn't something that ever worked for me.

The biggest thing that helped me was using guide coat when sanding to make sure I didn't over sand things and have a thin spot before I even started buffing.
Click to expand...
What did the buffer do when hitting the tape that drove you crazy? And what kind of buffing wheel do you use?
 
I find that if I tape the edge while sanding I don’t need tape for buffing and I never buff through the edge. It’s the sanding that sets you up for trouble imho. Buff off edge and don’t bare down on the edge.
 
I don't ever tape edges either. I haven't buffed a car together in some time, but I'd just tape and paper up the adjacent panel and move along to prevent the pad hitting the adjacent panel in the wrong orientation.

As long as you pay attention to the rotation of the pad burned edges arent a problem...It areas like this in the picture where you are trying to roll off the quarter, but it bites into the door.
 
orangejuiced86 said:
I don't ever tape edges either. I haven't buffed a car together in some time, but I'd just tape and paper up the adjacent panel and move along to prevent the pad hitting the adjacent panel in the wrong orientation.
As long as you pay attention to the rotation of the pad burned edges arent a problem...It areas like this in the picture where you are trying to roll off the quarter, but it bites into the door.
Click to expand...
I'm using a rotary buffer with a wool bonnet. I think you are right in that it did wrap around on me in that area. It wasn't that I had the buffer rotating in the direction it would grab the edge but still in a sideways direction that did let it wrap around a bit. By sideways I mean not in a direction totally into the edge but not totally away from it either. I'll also change so I don't get near the edges with a sideways rotation.
 
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