MITCH

has anybody had any success to remove of lessen it with buffing with car pro pads and a porter cable.

bobbykart

I know he has removed a good portion of the dreaded peel

Larry/car

My 2017 Admiral Blue car has a nice paint job, no dirt and the paint flowed out amazingly well. And it was produced around the Thanksgiving Holiday.

thill444

I don't think I have owned a car across various brands (Honda, Hyundai, VW, Subaru, etc) that did not have some level of orange peel. I honestly just stopped trying to worry about it and do my best to keep my car properly maintained.

Greg00Coupe

There is another thread on here which was pretty impressive with the results from a few weeks back..........you can do a search.

L8ter

Sure you can, but you're also going to be buffing away layers of potential protection.
If you do it you should certainly coat it with a ceramic, and or cover it with Xpel or similar product.

Foosh

Yes, you can lessen it, but you also have to exercise care. Multiple sources have confirmed that the clearcoat is relatively thin. The only way to lessen it is to remove layers of clear, and you can burn through it relatively quickly if you're too aggressive.

I also agree that if you're going to do this, you should probably go with a ceramic coating and PPF after. I've been told that one major paint correction is about all you can safely do on a C7 OEM paint job.

Larry/car

^^^ Unless your car is dedicated to show status, I wouldn't recommend spending the time and money to acquire that perfect finish. There are numerous threads where cars were damaged by road debris or other unfortunate incidents. On a country drive (about the safest there is) an oncoming vehicle can through a stone across the road that bounces off your hood. I keep my car nice, what I refer to as drive clean.

L8ter

While we were growing up we were far too poor to be able to afford anything that didn't need major paint correction.
So we learned it the old-fashioned way, with a bucket of water, 1000-2000 grit sandpaper, a Black & Decker drill, a polishing pad, and some rubbing compound.
While we did bring some of the old paint back from the dead, others didn't handle the resurrection quite as well. Whoops!

Steve Garrett

One of our Vendors, Todd Cooperider, at Esoteric Car Care, is VERY well versed at this. You might reach out to him about this.

And know that he doe NOT recommend wet sanding either.

L8ter

Nor did anyone else who replied to this thread.

Foosh

I certainly did not recommend wet-sanding a C7. That would most probably be a disaster.

Paint correction can mean a lot of things. The most you can do is a light compound/polish and buff on the C7, and you have to be careful with that. There isn't a lot of clear coat.

Wet sanding is only an option when both base coat and clear are applied with enough thickness to allow it. Base coat is applied, that is wet-sanded until smooth, then polished. The clear coat is applied and then that is also wet-sanded and polished. That's a very expensive and labor-intensive process that only happens with cars starting somewhere north of $200K. However, it's the only way to end up with zero OP.

lakemg

If the orange peel is driving you crazy and money isn't a factor, your could scuff the current clear coat and have a body shop spray multiple coats of clear coat on it and then wet sand it and polish to perfection with less risk of digging into the base (color) coat.

As a side note, I'm pretty sure that GlenE and a few others have wet sanded and polished to perfection, but it's a lot of work and risky. So it can be done, if you're up for the risk.