Thanks, Bing. Orange peel is like a curse and has existed in paint jobs from as far back as I can remember.
I’m not greatly experienced in working on paint. My dad was a body man, but he never taught me anything, just told me to learn on my own, which was unfortunate.
I think my local body shop owner mentioned the 2000 grit sandpaper method for the deep scratches they made, but since he’s yet to see it, he thought it more likely that if my fingernail encounters a ridge, it’s too deep to repair, and needs panel sanding and repainting.
It sounds like you’re pretty handy at fixing your own cars’ orange peel As far as your 86 Buick, do I understand correctly that your dealer re clear coated it, and the result was quite good? I guess you don’t know exactly what was under the touch-up job they did at the factory.
I’ll be taking the car into both the detailer & to my local body shop owner to see what they say. The body shop owner just threw out a rough estimate based on what I told him of $900 or so. Prices are high here. When you say a couple hundred dollars, are you talking about my cost to do it myself? As I highly doubt any shop will do it for that amount. I don’t have the expertise to do this on a new car.
I wish cars were still painted with enamel. It lasted a long time, and I remember a car gear head friend who would do his own paint fixes, and loved enamel. I remember I had 70’s Mercury that had enamel that was not waxed & exposed to the sun constantly. It was really dull. My friend took his buffer and did the whole car, and it looked fantastic. I then sold it, because I wasn’t crazy about Fords. I think it was a Mercury Marquis in good shape, but with shot springs from the really heavy owner who drove it.
On another paint issue, maybe you have some suggestions. I’ve got a Craftsman tractor, made by Husqvarna, where the design is so poor, they have sharp, vertical stop brackets to prevent the deck from bouncing too high up to prevent whatever damage would result from it going up too high. Of course, this would be their dumb design. They could have spent a buck to put tight-fitting, dense rubber caps over the sharp ends, but they just don’t care & cut every 10 cents they can off the designs. Since it is enamel, I tried to use a tiny solid sanding ‘thingy’ from a Duplicolor repair kit, to just spot repair where the brackets gouged directly through to the metal, but it looked bad, & since I can’t figure out how to do anything with these brackets, I’ve simply wrapped then with layers of painters tape, but that doesn’t last, and the darn deck will bang up on the tape & go through in a short time. Cutting an acre of land where the ground isn’t very smooth, like a suburban-sized lot, the deck bounces up & down from the irregular ground & from going near old & big tree roots.
