march2000

I was trying to touch up just a couple of small cut on the panel just below my driver side door. I did use the wet-sand method and when I was slowly and patiently sanding those down after the OEM touch up paint was dry, I notice that there is a metal spot next to it so I just slowly use the wet cloth and try to wipe them down and now I have about an inch and a quarter of bare metal which isn't relevent to the scatches I tried to touch up at all.

My guess is that I apply too much pressure when sanding them down and I guess the clearcoat and the paint around those area were also being sand at the same time so they just flake off leaving a line of metal. I tried to polish it off just to see how much paint did I take off with Meguiar's medium cut cleaner but it just made the paint peel/flake off even more around those area! After I finished with that I took off the wax and just touch that spot up and very careful sanding them down and apply cleaner and then polish that area.

Instead of touch up something very small where you can't even really see it unless you are like 3 feet awy. Now the spot where the paint peel off are a lot more visible and since the touch up paint doesn't really match well (seem darker when touch up) now I have an inch and a quarter of darker line under the door. Anyway, it isn't really visible from 15-20 feet away so I guess I just have to live with it. I tried to make it look as good as I can but I know the more you tried to make it perfect the more you will screw it up. Anyway, I was just wonder if the touch up I did on the paint will eventually come off since it was down to metal before the touch up?

thetz99

How well did you prep the bare metal? What did you use to prep?
What grit sand paper did you use?
What did you use as lubricant?
Did you use a sanding block?
What kind of results were you looking for/be happy with?
Did you polish by hand or with machine?

There is lots of stuff you are leaving out of your commentary that is relevant to finding a solution. My first guess is you used little lubricant/had a high grit sandpaper and your block was not level so your sanding motion abraided the painted area you didn't want sanded. I say this because you left the paint in the scratch while sanding the area around it.

Flaking paint is a sign of a previous paint job not done well....

Use a claybar in the future instead of wetsanding...easier and gives good results.

march2000

I used the dish washing soup and wash the area to make sure all the wax etc are off the area. I used 2000 grit wet sand. I didn't use anything as a lubricant except I put the sand paper in the water for awhile and did make sure that the sand paper were kept wet while sanding but I didn't use the sanding block. I just sand it down slowly by hand.

I guess this is the best result I will get without getting the area re-paint. After that I use the Meguiar's medium cut cleaner to get the area to shine again since the sand paper left a dull in the paint and follow with Zaino Z6.

Anyway, the paint is all original and I guess I was buffing it on and off so many time around the area as I didn't like the result and just kept redoing it again and the final result is what made the paint flake off. And part of that is I was not very careful before but after I realized that the paint had flake off then I was very very careful.