I think the dark color and metal flake hide it well, but LB has it too.

 

Ermmm!. You would clear coat the car first, if you were going this route. The body shop would then sand between coats.. the oranage peel is only tenths thick as in 10 thousands of an inch .0001 . the clear is atleast .005 thick.

 

Orange peel isn't so much a fault of GM, but actually, more of a gift to you from the EPA.

Thanks to regulations trying to protect the planet, automobile manufacturers that painted their vehicles in the USA are required to use a water based (I think) solvent for spray. The solvent used is not terribly effective of completely dissolving the mixture and there are times when minicscule "chunks" of the media (pigment or clear coat goo) will remain in suspension. This gets sprayed onto the vehicle and when dries has a raised appearance, because it is raised (even if only 1/100th of an inch).

The Corvette (C5 especially) has a noticible orange peel because the paint required for the body panels (flexible and can expand slightly in the heat) is particularly hard to dissolve. Often there is little or any problem, which is why there are owners who have no issues. Other times...well...

The only way to truly fix this (and remain legal) is to inpect each and every batch of clear immediately prior to spray. With tens of thousands of vettes being produced annually, that is never going to happen.

Light colors and metallics will show the least because their surfaces are already reflective and in the case of metalics are "sparkly" so any reflections caused by orange peel would be "lost" amoungst the paint. That's not to say that it isn't present, but it is less noticible. And dark colors, black especially, have the uncanny ability to show off every single flaw in the paint and thus exhibbit the most complaints.

 

I hate to say it , but you dont have a clue about orange peel or why it is there... the orange peel is always in the clear coat, it is only the top layers of the clear coat that shrink... you only see the top coat condition.. you only see the color throught the clear,,,if the colors made a difference you would have to remove all the clear in order to get the the color... make the clear flat and the orange peel is gone.. any paint, water based or not, when applied shrinks when it drys,( flashes) this is the evaporation of the delivery agent,...this shrinking is what cause the hills and valleys known as orange peel... could GM eliminate orange peel and still stay environmentaly legal??? absolutley..
but it would add several hundred dollars to the cost of the car. to remove orange peel , its a simple matter.. the problem is gm uses robots to paint these cars... they put out to pasture all those human painters... and the guys who use to block sand between coats...when acrylic laquer was the paint of choice.
anyone who has uses a spray can know it is impossible to deliver paint that is flat... everyone block sands the application cutting the peaks down to the valleys then applying another coat , cutting those peaks untill you have a very flat and thick valley area .. with a reflection like a mirror.. because there or no more peaks and valleys..
I wish some of these newbies who come here posting their BS... would do more listening and less filling the forum with their made up crap...
you could take a piece of very rough wood... clear it, and sand it smooth and flat and it would look like a mirror... the rough wood would still be rough but the surface of the cleared piece of wood would be smooth and flat and very very refective... I its only the top coat of clear that is the issue... about .0005 of an inch, thats 1/2 a thousands to those who dont do tenths.

 

it's a consistant bumpy look in the paint job. Once you notice it on your car you will always see it. Almost all vettes have it. Most cars in general have it.

BKNBLK- Do you have a pic of your car that shows how bad it is?

 

My brother is a painter and he just basically said the same thing you said EVIL TWIN.

 

My 00 DBGM has some pretty bad orange peel on the hatch. I would never take it to a dealer to resolve it. I'm going to take her to a paint shop that a friend of mine owns down here. He said he'd take care of it.

 

orange peel looks like the dimples found on the skin of an orange.. if you started to sand those dimples.. you would sand all the high spots leaving liitle round shiny circles( dots ) these shiny dots are the low spots... When you block sand the high spots they get dull leaving only the shiny dots... when you continue to sand, these shiny dots get smaller and smaller untill they too are dull because the sanding block has finally reached them.. Now the clear is flat... you rub out the dull finish and what remains is an ultra reflective ( very wet looking ) finish. with no orange peel . This should only be attempted by a professional... beacause there are certain areas that can Not be block sanded... edges are just one example of a place you do not block sand... any painted area that sees a 90* angle ( it is too easy to rub right through an area like this... )

 

My neighbor just bought a new Black Honda Accord -no orange peel. Look at any BMW - no orange peel. Not all manufacturers have it, just the domestics!

 

There are other painting parameters that causes orange peel, not just the makeup of the paint or clearcoat itself. Air pressure at the gun, distance of the gun to the surface, spray pattern and and volume adjustment at the head all will have an affect on paint quality, including orange peel. Back in the lacquer days, you could orange peel the paint itself, not just the clearcoat. It actually use to be a desirable outcome as it indicated the paint was not too thin. As a matter of fact, I remember painters several years ago strived for a little bit of that affect. Of course, they had the intentions of color sanding the paint anyway. But the alternative to orange peel was spraying it too dry which indicated not getting enough paint on it and having to sand even more before applying additional coats.
With that said, I would think that the automotive industry could regulate those parameters more closely to eliminate most of the orange peel affect. But then again, they may be wanting to make sure the paint is on thick enough and would rather have the orange peel outcome rather than risk having the paint applied too thin and dry.

 

Back in the laquer days, a can of laquer contained 80% clear, they never put clear over a laquer paint job.. Back then you sanded off 3/4 of the paint to get the finish ... My last corvette had a laquer paint job.. 9 quarts of paint cut three times... 27 quarts of paint applied to the car... 25 quarts were sanded off... orange peel is the product of and only the product of the amount of clear applied and the type of delivery agent used. when that delivery agent flashes off... goes to vapor.... the paint shrinks. its like when the Watersucker alien zaps the old farmer with his ray gun and all the water get ssucked out... it leaves the farmer all wrinkly and chiit.. same thing here... when the volitil goes to vapor the paint get all wrinkly and csxhit.

 

I used to have some orange peel on the hood--
I clay barred the hell outta the hood, used 3m swirl remover for dark cars with a random orbital, and then zainod (z5 and z6) with over ten coats.

Probably overkill, but this is how it came out--
wish I had taken "before" pictures though:

 

I think this pretty well explains it.

http://corvetteactioncenter.com/tech/paint.html

 

I agree with others here, if it were the type of paints and clear then other cars would experience orange peel. But they don't. This seems to be a Corvette issue.

 

 

Well if you want to see your first corvette without orange peel, come to pa and look at my white 04 coupe. Trust me, i know what to look for. I went over this baby with a friggin magnifying glass before i bought it. interestingly enough, there was also a black vert that was also peel less.

 

I don't know. I've seen plenty other American made cars with orange peel as well. A friend's Dodge Ram Hemi pickup has very noticable orange peel, one of the worst one's I've seen.
As in my previous post, I think this article pretty well sums it up.

http://corvetteactioncenter.com/tech/paint.html

 

nice job, but hood's always have reasonably good finish since it's flat. gotta check lower half of the doors (below the curve just below the door handle). that's the key spot. also anywhere on rear fascia. paint viscocity on them curves is a beeatch....

 

very good explanation. too bad 9 years later they still haven't gotten around to fixing the problem!!

 

You would think! This was even before the C5's came out. The way it sounded was like they were going to get their sh^t together in time for the next generation (C5 at that time). Maybe on the C6...................