Crappy Stock Paint! Help?

[jberylec]

I've been seeing a lot of pictures around here of some really shiny & perfectly painted 05+ Mustangs! Even on the very close up high detail photos!

My Windveil Blue looks like crap, up close you can see honeycomb shapes all over the entire car! Is this normal? Or is it something that Ford should cover as warranty work to fix? How did you guys get rid of it? Polishing? Buffing? Waxing? Help!

TIA

 

[REDFIRE 05 GT]

Mine is crappy too, orange peel bad

 

[nycstang37]

i know the ford factory paint is very soft and there is not alot of clearcoat to play with when using any type of compound that does some serious cutting to fix swirls, so be easy on it when detailing, now orange peel, nothing you can do, even $100,000 mercedes have it so deal with it. as far as honeycomb shapes?!? if you mean a bumby look to reflections, thats orange peel, and your kind of stuck with it unless you get the car wetsanded to fix the problem, but that is some $$$$ depending on the job and may not even fix it completely. to fix it, you need the clear sanded off, color sanding done and new clear put on, a couple layers thick then sanded again.

 

[jberylec]

That's it! Orange peel describes it perfectly!
This sucks

So some cars have it and some dont? There's this red car on here that looks so damn sweet! the paint has a perfect mirror finish!

This isn't something Ford will fix under warranty?

 

[nycstang37]

well some colors dont show it as much, but all cars have it, to what degree is another story. usually darker colors show it more(they show everything more) but every color does have it. also some cars might just come out better regar4dless of color, straight from the paint shop at the factory, even though machines do it there are always variations. me personally , orange peel doesnt bother me that much, and i am a fanatic about my paint, but swirls hurt me to look at, even when its not my car!

 

[The Fang]

The only orange peel look I have is on parts of my rear quarter panels. I have one real flaw in my paint on my hood that looks like a sweat drop in the paint then the clearcoat over it.

 

[A&B 06GT]

Yea im having my car re-cleared at the body shop.

 

[Unbrdld07]

I have an overspray area on the top left part of my hood, can't REALLY see it except when the light hits just right, but you can sure feel it after a wax job.

 

[Dreadnaught]

I'm a little dissapointed at the color selection and paint quality used on s197. Paint color/quality is a big pet peeve of mine (and I'm sure many others) when buying a car, and I'm not impressed with the colors or the quality on any of the s197 mustangs thus far - what ever happened to that vintage dark, brillant blue?

I'm more than likely just going to go with black and just keep it waxed and VERY clean (black is hell on maintenance), that's all any of us can really do; unless you want to shell out $10,000 for a custom paint job (which I would love to do).

 

[Spdfreak]

It seems to be more of a problem with the metallic colors. My torch red has no orange peel at all. Maybe I'm lucky.

 

[anthony05gt]

My black has always looked damn good and I'm picky.

 

[celticstanger]

Don't know if it'll be covered, but Ford need to get their sh1t together with quality. My wife's 05 Expedition was keyed on the pass. door and she had to get it repainted. D@mn bodyshop did a mighty fine job, and now she's got one door with a beautiful glass-like finish, which only serves (on close inspection) to highlight the junk effort Ford made with the original job.

"Quality is Job #1...to go, when trying to cut costs and maximise profit..."

Unfortunately, I had the reverse situation - my factory paint was perfect, but the bodyshop effort after my accident was like they got a gang of kids, handed them cans of spray-paint and told them to have at it!

 

[allcarfan]

we have a torch red 06--hood looks good, but the rest of the car has a terrible terrible orange peel. Any tiny rock that hits the car takes off the paint right down to the metal. I am not real happy with it.

 

[hethj7]

My black paint has two pretty noticeable swirl marks. I haven't had time to try and polish them out yet, but I hate reading about how thin the clear is Ford uses.

 

[flieger67]

How well does touch-up painting work with these finishes? I'm particularly curious about the metallics, especially Tungsten Grey.

 

[A&B 06GT]

In a day or two i will post my car pics of the recleared paint.

 

[DokterD]

Paint

Compared to the clearcot black 91 LX that came without the clearcoat (and went downhill from there) the red 93 Lighting, and the black 01 Lightning, this one is wonderful. It always looks clean and I can't see any flaws so far.
Tungsten GT.:SNSign:

 

[Dreadnaught]

Crappy stock paint is something we all are going to have to deal with. We are basically left picking the color we really want (however low quality that may be), or settling for another color that won't show imperfections as well as other colors. When I buy my Mustang I'm going with Vista Blue, however I don't like the quality of the color at all - I've always wanted a blue mustang with eventual white dual lemons strips.

What you can do to fix the low quality/protection of your current steed's exterior, is invest in high quality cleaning/protectant products. Two products come to mind (after exstensive forum searching both on this site and others), Meguiars and Zaino - I just spent $108 ($16 including tax/shipping) on Meguiars. This includes all claying, cleaning, polishing, washing, waxing products I'll need for the exterior, plastic trim, aluminum rims, and tires of my 96 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo - also included in the price were numerous washing/drying towls, a tire brush, and applicator pads. Time to start practicing for the Mustang .

I bought the wax at a local auto zone to try out the line (Meg NXT liquid wax) and it REALLY made an improvement, I now am able to clearly see the orange peel were before it was so filthy you couldn't see anything ! I plan on taking before and after pictures and will post them so you can see how this line works on handling beat up, old, poor quality paint jobs.

 

[A&B 06GT]

This is how im fixing it....

 

[bigcat]

i keep thinking about that too, but i would also want to smooth out the factory panels to perfection. but then i think about the fact that it is my DD. i will worry about the paint in a few years, when it is not my DD any longer.

are you doing the work yourself, or having a shop do it?