Question: When painting a car, should you wetsand the base coat, or should you wetsand after the clear coat is sprayed? I'm looking for a deep shine but I don't want to screw my paintjob up when I get it.

 

if you really wanted to, you can wet sand the base coat. you really need to worry about wet sanding the clear coat.

use 1500-2000 grit paper. 2000 will take longer, but it is not as easy to mess it up, and the finished product will be better imo

 

I would only worry about sanding on the basecoat if there was a problem area like something dropped on it while it was still wet. Other than that it does not need to be sanded. Your clear will bury most imperfections. I sand clear in 3 stages..1200,1500 and 2000 then buff it with a decent compound like Finesseit II. This will remove 2000 sanding scratches quickly.

 

Alrighty, sounds good.

The plan is this. I've already done (most of) the prep-work. I'm going to take it to Maaco ( ::group gasp:: ) after masking/removing everything myself and have them spray it, and then wetsand the paintjob. That's why I was wondering if I needed to sand the base coat, that way I could see if I could take the car back and wetsand it before they sprayed the clear.

I hope that the end result will be a somewhat decent paintjob; I know it won't be top-notch show-quality but I'd like it to look nice.

Should I wait any period of time after the car is painted before wetsanding?

 

With all ours cars, depending on ambient temp and humidity we usually wait 24-48 hrs before we start wet sanding the clear and buffing. You want it to get hard, but the longer you wait, the harder it is to work with. That's just us though and they're probably other painting pro's that have a different opinion than what we've done.

 

Alright, I'll be sure to wait a few days before wetsanding, thanks for the advice.