My car's trunk lid was replaced due to a ding. I had the work done at the only certified BMW repair shop in New England. The work carries BMW's warranty for life, so I recently brought it back in complaining about the orange peel effect.

When looking at the quarter panels, the new paint on the lid has a noticable amount of dimples that are much closer together when I compare it to the not so perfect BMW original paint.

Although the service rep didn't know exactly what he was talking about, he assured me his techinician did. To fix it, he mentioned a wet sand and polish.

Does this sound right? The wet sand effects the clear coat...is the orange peel effect in the paint or in the clear coat? What is the recommended process for ridding the orange peel? I want to have an idea of what the remedy is before I bring it in for the work. Thanks!

If they wet rub the panel and polish it it will remove the orange peel effect all together and have a very flat finish, from my experience this will not match the original paint of the rest of the car. The factory clear over base paint has an inherant orange peel finish as it is straight off the gun, no rubbing and buffing required like the old acrylic paints of old. I would recommend you have the paint shop respray the panel to acheive a better finsih because I doubt you will be happy with the rub and buff they are proposing, this is what paint shops do beacuse it is quciker, easier and cheaper than respraying to get the correct finsih.

I disagree w/ this statement a bit when it comes the the paint on a BMW. The paints on these cars all have clear coats w/ the exception of black and white (non metallics) The wet sanding will knock down the peal on the clear coat and not the paint. If there is a color mismatch, the will most likely have to buff the rest of the car to remove any oxidation. If it is a reputable body shop they should not have any problem doing that. If they buff the entire car and it still does not match then that means that they did not properly color match the paint and they will have to respray the panel. The color of your car will also effect whether or not it you will have an issue w/ paint match. Metallics can be more difficult to match due to the fact that the metallics can make the paint match look different. Each car has a paint code associated w/ the color and the body shop has the formulas to mix the paint to match but this is not always the case. Sometimes you need to modify the mix to create a better match and that is were you run into the mismatch issue most of the time. I worked in a body shop in high school and early college and painted plenty of cars so I would not worry to much about it. Since your car is Black Sapphire Metallic you will want to make sure you have car outside in the sun to review the paint. That will be the only real way to tell if the metallics match.

Good Luck

The non-metallic Jet Black and Alpine White color paints have clear coating also.

But KCooke82 asks an interesting question ... "is the orange peel effect in the paint or in the clear coat?" I've always guessed it was in the clear coat (which could be corrected with wet sanding), but I suppose it could be the paint that is orange-peeled. :think:

It sucks, but many luxury brands suffer from this malady lately. Look carefully at any black or darker color MB, Audi, Jag, Cadillac ... even Lexus somewhat, and you will see some level of orange peel effect - especially on the vertical panels. Porsche seems to be the only one immune (leaving aside the rest of the supercar gang).

The orange peel usualy is in the clear coat. The color layers of the paint is very very thin compared to the clear coat. As for Black, I know that Glasurit (paint company) actually has paint codes which is Mercedes Benz Black and there is no mixing and it is darker than normal blacks. I was shocked the number of different colors that you add to black to have them match.

The BMW factory sprays on a dry powder then bakes it in an oven to create the clear coat. There are muliple reasons for this process being used, including cost savings, supposed durability, and environmental emissions reduction. The body shop uses clear liquid spray paint. The factory dry/bake process results in clear orange peel that many complain about on this board.

Interesting input guys...I really appreciate it. There looks to be a lot of knowledge here. Since it is a certified BMW body shop, I guess I will have to trust they do what's best. If not, it's covered under warranty. From what I can tell, the paint matches find, it's just the orange peel effect is much worse on the new paint. Letting them wet sand and polish should reveal instant results...I just hope it doesn't wear down the clear coat so much that I have to limit my polishing. With a black car, swirl marks are inevitable!

Well they could end up smoking thought the clear into the paint layer during sanding or buffing and that would mean they would have to respray the entire panel. Make sure you look at the body lines because they are the easiest things to mess up a paint job and believe me I have done it and there is nothing worse then burning though the clear because you know you have to repaint the panel no matter what on top of sanding fixing the panel for the new paint job