GMC Motorhome, The final polish is the thing

A little reality check for those looking for an inexpensive exterior refinish … that is possible and a goal for many.  Had a great GMC owner- friend – retired engineer who said to me once after doing a big deal paint job on his coach    Finished off with alloy rims, side molding and all that is a good looker but he said in some ways he had not wished he would have done it looking back.  Seems that he used his coach to push through small dirt roads to places he went, now he was too scared to go there!  See, a good reason to spray a coach with bedliner…… but not that far how finely finished coach fits your use?

Asking this question to most though they want as slick and cool looking paint job as they can get and to that end the title of todays plunking is what it’s all about.  Wet sand and buff… the less pores you have in the sinish, the less dirt gets in.  The slicker the finish the glossier the finish….. just no was around that… a car comes out of the booth and you say that looks fine …. now wet sand that finish and buff it to say 3000 …. big difference and this is the difference folks bring their coach to us for. 

I guess I do it as sort of shock value showing up at a rally in JayGee    It does throw some back but hey, maybe I lean more toward Nelson’s use of the coach.  When my bullet hole stickers start to shrink I can put new ones on!

I know silly, this it the kind of finishes we’re noted for and do all the time.          and more.  What makes the difference?  Well, prep work has to always be an answer to that but for a quality job you KNOW all that has to be good.  You have to use good base color… bad color.. bad job and the clearcoat on the base has to be top notch… we use a high solids very thick clear and lay on at least 4 coats…. Why?  Crap, that looks pretty good already…..    Here is JD’s coach after the bags were pulled…. raw, soft clearcoat right out of the booth…… hey and it looks great!  Now, lets get to work… It’s gotta look worse before it looks better, we wet sand with 1000 grit or better the surface taking anything higher that the thickness of the sand on the paper off The spot to the right is wet sanded to 1500, above the strip up there is out of the booth and the spot done is buffed out.  Here is JD’s coach with it’s first buff out  in the light    u can see the level of gloss here of that finish   Now inside, Junior can really get jiggy with the polish and the new foam pad finish buffing geer we have    The headlights will end up original black/silver plus we’re going back to round bulbs.  We put the 16.5″ Weld rims back on for now wanting to save his new 17″ American Eagles the buffing compound plus we’re doing a red line on his 17″ rims similar to what we did on “Rock the Alps” wheels   will match JD’s Corvette! 

But the final finish is where it’s at and there’s no better way to demonstrate this than the buff work we’re doing on this Airstream commercial use trailer    Pretty shiney right and when we got the deteriorated graphics off it really looked nice!    Then the crew got into buff mode and holy crap what a slick finish makes.  This is the finish it came in with… I swear… and the finish we got after the first layer of buffing  Maybe this will help you see it better…. no buff and buff    The same thing happens with paint… get rid of the nubbies, orange peal and open pores and this is what you get    Still need to polish below the window…. Wow… what a difference and that’s what happens to paint too.

So when someone says to you we didn’t need to buff it out of the booth…….. agree and smile……  don’t tellm’, yours will always be shinier!    Same with window tint.  We’re going for the modified raccoon look on JD’s layout so it’s important the windows are black to fit in…. hey, look pretty good right?    Well under our combination flouresent and LED lights in the big house you can see JD’s tint is starting to do the purple fade thing  …. not much but just enough to see  the problem with anything we touch… everything we don’t touch show it!  But looking closer this was a cheap tint job… look at the 1″ black “gimp they used to cover up their bad cuts      A bad cut AND cheapoo film…. Looks like I’ll be retinting these windows in the ceramic reflective stuff next week!

So bottom line, if you don’t want a hi finish paint job don’t get one…. but if your goal is to make it look nice then brother do it!

It’s the weekend so we’ll see ya later… have a great day off…. like me…..

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