It's still CLEARCOAT, but not so "clear cut"

By Kevin Farrell of Kleen Car Auto Appearance

We know by now that almost all vehicles are painted in basecoat/clear coat, with the clear coat portion of the paint being what we buff. There is no secret there. We also know that clear coat is still paint, but a clear paint applied over the base or color coat that gives the vehicle its gloss, clarity, and UV protection. It will still mar and show scratches and will still need to be taken care of to keep the finish looking its absolute best.

What is more difficult to understand is that there are many differing variations of clear coat, made by many different paint companies. Many times these variations will be found within car manufacturers and make things a bit confusing and difficult.

So many clears
Car plants use different types of clears from model to model and from brand to brand. Just because we know that today's cars use "clear coat" as the final top coating, it does not mean they will all be the same, and exhibit the same characteristics when being taken care of. Combine the different brands of clear coat with different substrates that they are applied on, and the way they buff can be totally different and very confusing.

Without fully going into all the different types of clear coat out there (and there are many) we have to understand and expect that they all may exhibit different reactions and results when you buff them. I have seen over the years many different variations clear coats. Some are very easy to buff and will look spectacular no matter what you do to them. Some will be harder to buff and removing scratches and imperfections will be troublesome. Some will be very soft and will leave swirling and marring no matter how delicate you are with them. What's worse is that unless you have had major experience with many different car lines and realize how their clear coats tend to buff out, you will never know what you are in for when it comes to buffing.

At the factory
One of the first things done at the factory is to paint the vehicle. After the body is welded together and the outside panels such as the roof, hood, deck lid, doors, etc are installed, the vehicle is painted. This is the necessary first step as the car needs to be painted "before" the rest of the vehicle is put together. The paint needs to dry and cure very quickly to allow the assembly line to keep producing cars at a fairly fast rate. It's an amazing site to see a car painted at the factory. The precision is astonishing with robotic sprayers moving and a fine mist of paint covering the vehicles and turning a bare sheet metal body into a glowing and spectacular sight. The wet cars move into a bake oven to dry and cure the clear coated paint. The combination of the chemistry of the clear coat, and the temperature and time duration that it's baked at, will ultimately determine how easy or difficult that particular paint job will be to buff. This can be referred to as the "hardness" or "softness" of the clear.

The problem is that all plants will use different brands of clear at different plant locations. You will never be able to tell the difference just by looking at the paint finish. They will all look virtually the same. But they will all buff slightly differently. Frustrating isn't it? People always ask me if they have a chart on the different clears that the car plants use and how they will buff. Unfortunately, there is no chart. You will need to gain some experience on how different models and different years of cars buff out.

Hard vs. soft clear
If we go back about 30 years ago, to single stage paint jobs which were lacquer or enamel, these paint surfaces were fairly hard and needed more aggressive methods to buff out. If you know anybody who has been in the business a while, they will tell you about the older buffing products that felt like beach sand when rubbed between your fingers. They will also tell you about buffing with very aggressive wool pads and very high speed on the buffer. They also would have laughed if you would have shown them an orbital buffer or a product where you could not feel the abrasives between your fingers. An orbital and a light duty buffing product just would not work on older style paint systems. It was just the chemistry of those paints back then. They were very hard and when they oxidized or needed correction, you needed to be very aggressive. This was the buffing method needed across the board, no matter who the car manufacturer was.

When the transition started to take place and clear coats came into existence back in the early 80's, those initial clear coats were also very hard. They were called Melamine clears. They exhibited the same characteristics of the single stage paint systems, so detailers did not really need to change their buffing style very much, or their products, buffing speed, buffers themselves, or buffing pads. The only thing that really changed was there was no color transfer from the car to the buffing pad. The paint was now "clear" compared to colored, as it had been for many years.

Melamine clear coats are still in use today but generally not on higher lines makes and models. Its gloss is not as brilliant as some newer clear coat chemistries and they are not quite as etch resistant. So car manufacturers started going to a more brilliant glossy clears that had more etching resistance but chemistry wise, they were "softer". These are called urethane clears. More recently, powder clears which exhibit the same buffing characteristics are used for V.O.C purposes and material savings because the powder can be recycled. These clears originally were used on more high line and upscale vehicles to show a more brilliant finish. However, they were softer and more susceptible to scratches but they were easier to buff. So an easier clear to buff will mean it will also be easier to swirl and haze.

Habits had to change

Old habits regarding buffing had to change with the inception of these "softer" clears. No longer could a detailer "go to town" with high speed, a course product, and an aggressive buffing pad. Changes had to be made in the form of softer, foam pads and the use of less speed while handling a high speed buffer. This also meant the detailer needed more skill in buffing. "Old school" detailers had to adapt to newer buffing techniques or these clears would be full of swirl marks, holograms, and have a general haziness to them with far less gloss if buffed incorrectly.

Unfortunately, many detailers did not change, and did not understand the way that these newer, softer clear coats had to be buffed. Yes, they would easily remove scratches and imperfections by buffing the old way, but they would never really learn to make the clear have perfect gloss and clarity because of the aggressive methods still being used on a totally different chemistry of clears.

Now, if we fast forward to just the last couple of years...Car manufacturers have seen that the softer clears were coming off leases and being marred and scratched too much. There was far too much reconditioning and paint work that had to be done to get these "pre owned" vehicles ready for resale. So, they wanted to come up with a chemistry of clear that was harder than a urethane or powder clear, yet still retain the same brilliance and gloss. But at the same time they wanted them to be more scratch resistant.

Back to harder clears!
So now, many manufacturers have gone back to a harder version of clear coat to gain more scratch resistance. The term of these new generation of clears is simply called "scratch resistant clears" One common name for them is a brand called Cerami-Clear which simply uses nanno, or very tiny particles of ceramic that migrate to the very top portion of the clear coat and give it more scratch resistance against car washing and normal everyday abrasions. It's a better version of the old Melamine clear coats which are also very hard. But...some of these hard clear coats are very hard and very difficult to remove imperfections. You will need to be fairly aggressive to get anywhere with some of these newer, harder clears. I have also seen scratch resistant clears that once you buff through the very thin nanno section of ceramic particles that are at the very top of the clear, it turns into a softer clear underneath and can still swirl and mar very badly, even though technically it's a scratch resistant clear. So this can be very confusing and demoralizing for a detailer as well.

In addition, not all vehicles are using these newer, harder clears. Some car manufacturers are using the scratch resistant clears on ALL their vehicles such as Mercedes. Some manufacturers are using these clears on some of their cars but not all of them. For example, BMW uses scratch resistant clear coat on all vehicles made in Germany. However, on their vehicles made in the US such as the Z4, X3 and X5, they are still using the softer powder clear coats at the plant in South Carolina. And a couple of years ago, before all the German made BMW's made the change to scratch resistant clear, some plants would still use a soft clear while some plants had already switched to a harder version. So it was not inconceivable to see the same year and same model vehicle, in the same color with one having a soft clear and one having a hard clear. That will make buffing rather interesting, wont it?

Some other car lines are still exclusively using soft clears. So, it's not so easy being a detailer these days as you can see. There are many different types of clear coats still in use with almost all of them having their own buffing characteristics.

Can't have tunnel vision
Many detailers, especially "old school" detailers like to buff one way. They have their favorite buffer with their favorite speed. They also use their favorite pad and their favorite product. And they never fluctuate. This will cause problems. Maybe some cars will buff out perfectly with all the imperfections being eliminated and still having a great gloss and clarity with no swirl marks or haziness. But then there will be cars that will have swirls and marring all over them because the detailer was too aggressive. As well, some cars will still have the scratches and imperfections still left in them because this clear was not buffed aggressive enough. This is because all the clears still have various chemistries and will all buff out differently. That is why this "tunnel vision" or one-way of buffing just cant work anymore.

A detailer needs to be able to see what's going on with the clear as you are buffing it. If you are overly aggressive, you will have a lot of cleaning up of swirls and hazing to do which will take considerably more time and effort to get it right. If you are not aggressive enough, the car will not look as good as it should and you may have to go back and get more aggressive, again meaning more time and effort.

There is no chart
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a nice handy chart that listed all the clears that the car manufacturers use and how they will buff out? Well unfortunately, there is not. Knowing how certain car lines will buff out according to the year and model will come with much experience. If you don't have that experience as of yet, then it's essential to buff a small area of the vehicle you are working on to see how it will react. It's always better to start with the least aggressive methods of buffing and see what the results are. Some vehicles may look good if buffed with an orbital buffer, while some vehicles will need to be buffed with a rotary or high speed buffer. Even if you know going in what kind of clear coat a vehicle has on it, you will still need the proper equipment, products and skill to get the job done correctly.

It used to be that a car was either single stage paint or clear coat and they all buffed out about the same. It's not the case anymore. Many detailers are genuinely worried and try to keep up with all the new clears and how they will react to buffing. I know you want to try to keep track of what's on each and every car, but it's almost impossible to distinguish them by eye. And with some manufacturers using both soft and hard versions of clear, it makes our jobs even more difficult.

New generation of products

With new generations of clear coats come new generations of buffing products. The new trend is for products to be labeled as "ceramic clear polishes". Simply, these are products that have larger micron size abrasives or a more aggressive type of abrasive. Another trend is in "polishes" that can perform multiple tasks such as cutting and finishing. In next months issue I will look at some of the newer styles of buffing products, and how both David Ghodoussi of Optimum Polymer and I have created and replaced existing buffing products at a couple of major auto plants with the newer technology of buffing products.