I have had this on custom painted cars in the past (i.e. XJ!@L with a chevy). The answer was to wait untill the paint had fully hardened (3-4 weeks after painting even with the catlyists) then have it professionall buffed out, followed by the wax treatment of your choice. This gave me a show quality finish.
I have noticed orange peel in my redline and am planning on having it buffed out in the next few weeks.
RxO explained it well and claying is another option. The paints that are used have changed and orange peel is a fact of life and the custom paiont shops that are good plan on dealing with it either before releasing the car the the customer or by making arraingements to hjave the car brought back in to have it buffed out (or by using claying).

 

The orange peel on my Lemans is one of the first things I noticed when picking it up. The degree of the peel is not severe. However, I would think a large manufacturer could do better. I believe what causes it is the painter putting on 2 thicker coats of paint rather than 3 thin coats. The drive to do this is to save time which is money. I should add that the peel is much less evident in natural light. 99.5% of people would never notice. Of course serious car buffs will.

Sunsetman

 

My Daytona Blue also has orange peel. You have to be looking for it to see it, but a friend of mine who just got his car painted and so was sensitive to these things pointed it out to me. Apparently it's not uncommon to see this in new paint jobs and new cars.

I can't see buffing it out -- you'd have to get through the clear coat to smooth it out, and that's not a good idea!

 

Orange peel is a fact of life on new cars, unless you are extremely lucky you will have some orange peel on your car. In fact, when you go to a concours car show that rates vehicles restored to factory specs, cars that do not have orange peel actually have points deducted because it would not have come that way from the factory.

 

350zPower, sorry to hear you already got a chip! That's one reason I chose the silverstone color - I'm hoping chips won't be as obvious on that color as it would on a brighter color. My Integra is all white and the chips are visible because they expose the darker color underneath.

As for orange peel, I'm also hoping silverstone will mask some of that. I think orange peel is less noticeable on a mettalic finish, but that's just my opinion.

I have painted several cars (Z's mostly ) and creating a deep, thick looking finish without crossing into orange peel was always a challenge. The temperature of the metal as you paint, the ambient air temp, I think even how/if you bake the finish will affect orange peel. I remember painting and having slight orange peel in spots, but as the thinners flash off the orange peel turned back into glass-smooth finish.

I am actually quite disappointed with most factory paint jobs. Orange peel is a flaw, because only skilled painters can put the paint down without any orange peel. Anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

 

Will Super Black show the orange peel?

 

Come on now, points for PEEL?? I see, restored to the original lousy finnish!!

Well today we looked at a blue Z. Has lots of peel and this poor car had mis-matched bumpers to body color. Even my wife saw it and she has a hard time seeing stuff like that.

It seems that the first few were 'better', but now that production is in full swing the quality is slowly going down.

Black show the peel the worse and black cars usually are painted with greater care (or at least come out looking better what ever they might do at the factory to reduce the peel).

Currently I own a VW New Beetle (black) (the one getting replaced by the Z) a Volvo and a MZL320 Sport Ute. The Bug has absolutely NO PEEL anywere, a super great paint job!

The MB is about the same except at the bottom kick plates. The older Volvo is not to bad but it's an airport car and who cares.

Seems that German cars get better paint than Jap cars.

<b>I'm inclined personally to not accept the car if the finish has a lot of orange peel. Of course it an orange car so maybe it's there for effect </b>

 

I think Sunset man is correct in that 99.5% of us would not even notice the "orangepeel" unless it was fairly bad. I have looked very closely at 4 of the preproduction cars and 3 production cars and didn't notice any problems with the paint. In fact, I was very happy with the way all of the cars looked. I was not looking for blemishes, just admiring the cars and checking out al of the features.

 

How do you know the date your car was painted? Mine says 07-02 meaning July of 02, I have no idea of the day. Where did you find your date.

 

I haven't seen anyone suggest getting a little bottle of touch-up paint from the Nissan dealer. It only costs a few bucks and it's a true life saver. Every time I wash the car, I go over it slowly with the old bottle of touch-up paint. If nothing else, it prevents rust. Most people wouldn't see the touch ups unless they look hard.

Sorry if I've stated the obvious.

Fly

 

Theese new low-solvent/enviromentaly freindly paints will end-up having more orange peel. There only way to get rid of it is intense polishing or wet-sanding. What you basicaly doing is abrading away the tops of the "peels" and flatening out the paint...in essense sanding away a layer of the clear coat...NOT a good idea as the top .3 mils of the paint is the densest, and this dense top layer is what holds up the the elements better, once you remove it, your paint will age faster. Unfortunatly, claying wont help neither will adding polymer sealant.

 

some of the prange peel is below the clear coat, so you would have to sand the coat of, wet sand and buff the paint and then reapply clear coat. Yeah right!

 

No, 90% of it is in the clear, the clear coat is really the new low solvent paint that Im talking about. I dont know about the e-coat. You can remove most of the orange peel, but like I said, even if you do it right, its not a good idea down the road.

 

The one thing that has never been mentioned throughout this thread is where the orange peel is?

On my Toyota Tacoma pickup, there is an orange-peel look at the bottom of the door, running along the length of the truck. This orange-peel is supposed to be there. It is a treatment that takes more abuse on the bottom portion of the vehicle.

Is this what everyone is upset about? Is this orange-peel normal or is it a problem? Where is it exactly? If it is on the lower part of the body, then it could be normal.

Just wondering,
Todd

 

I just want to interject one thing here. Guys, drive the car and you won't give a **** how much orange peel is in the paint. After 250+ glorious miles I would have bought this car with a f*cking flat black primer finish.

Did you buy (are buying) it to drive or to look at? ENJOY THE RIDE!

 

Yeah driod, but its like a woman, you can't really say "who cares if shes ugly as long as shes good in the sack"...looks count.

 

sorry folks my silverstone looks better than a porshe and has no orange peel im #485 dont know if they took better care on the 1st 500 or so but put it next to a porshe tonite at the cheetah and it looked better paint is awesome and so is the car

 

The paint job (and everything else for that matter) is a statement as to the overall quality of the construction and the pride one gets from owning a 'work of automotive art'