time to full cure?

5

58mark

I've heard that you can sand and buff universal clear for up to three months after spraying it. Does that mean that it takes that long to cure? Until then, how soft is it? Do I need to not put a car cover on it, ect?

what's the cut and buff window? earliest to the latest
 
I won't comment on the cure time, but I would not recommend using a car cover EVER. If the vehicle is outside, an animal of some kind, with claws, will find it if there is a cover on it. The paint job will be trash very quickly.

Aaron
 
if it never sees the sun and its not cured i sure wouldnt put a cover on it yet. best to let barry answer i guess.
 
Cure and buff time is not related with Universal or MS.

Total cure could be as soon as 2 weeks or slowest for a job I have done is 9 months.

Lots and lots of factors decide this.
 
well, I live in texas. I'm assuming if I paint my car in august it's going to see days both outside and in the garage that the temps reach 110 or higher. Both August and september are hot months here, with temps not cooling off until late october.

Is there a point where universal gets difficult to cut and buff? are we talking days, weeks, or months?
 
i've buffed it 4 months after spraying....after it has set outside and been put through the elements in the summer...and still cut and buffed excellent. extra slow activator. of course it doesn't cut and buff like it did a few days after spraying...but put it up against any of the leading clears out there...it is night and day. Actually in the next few weeks i have to do some detailing on the fury that i did about a year ago....universal should be fully cured by now..seeing is how the car sat outside for 3 days at carlisle, july, last year in direct sunlight. i dont expect to have any problems.

i'll say this about it also, that car was driven all the way back home...roughly 600 miles at 75mph the whole way back...NO chips. This clear just does not get brittle seems like. love it.
 
cleared the spi vette in dec . waited until march to buff it after some good uv days. not as easy as lacquer but damn near it. hard production clears are hard to buff and chip easy. what sold me on spi products is they remain flexible .
 
It gets as hard to buff in about two weeks as it ever will.
UNLESS a 1.3 tip is used with wet floors and high humidity can cause a problem, not definite but could cause a problem and usually if this problem occurs, it will buff like a rock next day or within three days.

This weekend I had to 1500 a fender I painted 10-12 years ago buffed with one pass.
 
For show quality work most people do a buff and polish within the first few days then later a final polish after it reaches full cure. This is the same with all clears... It'll cut and buff easier when green but when a clear reaches full cure it will polish to perfection much easier. You can notice a difference in hardness at full cure but I agree the flexibility and chip resistance of UV stays excellent. A lot of things can influence when full cure is reached-was sealer used? temps? baked? sun time? Production shops will ship their work the same day or next day and that's OK but in cold weather with the car being put into service that soon there may be some light car wash type surface scratches that will develop from normal use when fresh-easy to polish out later though.
 
It sounds like the universal never cured to that diamond hard finish that some clears do. Is that true?
 
58mark;6768 said:
It sounds like the universal never cured to that diamond hard finish that some clears do. Is that true?
Click to expand...
Hard finish? Hard enough IMO for a really high gloss. The trouble with some of the big name brand clears that seem really hard is they do get brittle with age. I had to repaint a Harley a little while back, I had painted the bike 11 years prior with Chrome Illusion and the best clear available out of that paint line, very durable stuff I thought at the time, scratch resistance was good, didn't chip easily, high solids, good depth.... But the paint ended up getting so brittle as it aged it needed to be stripped, 11 years and it was chipping like lacquer.
 
Interesting... I always thought the hardness of a clear was its selling point. Now it almost sounds like a negative

So does this clear etch if it gets sap or bird droppings on it like a lacquer does?
 
funny you ask that......had a bird dropping on the fury the other day.....must have happened in the morning and it sat all day in direct sunlight.....got up to 80 the other day so it was baked on real good. couldnt scrape off with my fingernail. a little warm water and light rubbing then a pass with some compound and polish on a rag and couldn't tell it was there.

i used to get complaints from local builders that the clear i use was too soft.......sikkens acIII is a pretty soft clear..even though it is a collision clear, slow reducers and hardeners make the world of difference.....they couldn't understand why the clear was scratching when they wiped dust of with one of those red shop towels.....lol! i always tell them, its easier to fix a surface scratch than a chip.

its not really about hardness, but about durability. a softer clear can be more durable than a harder clear....more times than not, it is. to me it really isn't worth giving up chip resistance for more surface scratch resistance.....i always have compound and polish in stock and is quicker than feather, prime, paint, cut & buff.
 
nope, I've had some seagull bombs to cleanup and no problems, bug juice also no problems.
 
never had a problem cleaning off bird poop while curing in the sun...
 
Ive buffed Universal at 2 years old.. Buffed an entire show car like this when it came back for repair work after it was put together.. I actually hit it with P1200 on DA and did a complete re buff.. Stuff buffed like butter, just like before..

Bird poop.. Well I think we all have had that happen.. I always get a part bombed somewhere when my paint jobs set out in the sun lol
 
Believe it or not, I've only shot laquer in my life, so clear coat is a new concept for me. I love the ease of spraying lacquer, but not the upkeep. One bird bombs left for two days unnoticed can really screw up a lacquer job, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't about to get into a similar problem with the clear.

I'm learning a lot. I would have thought a harder clear would be a GOOD thing, but I cna see how something that bends, but doesn't break would be even better

I can also see how that theory would carry over to puting clear on plastic bumpers. A super hard clear would crack and spider web, and one that maybe has a little more give to it might not
 
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