M3SQRD wrote

The paint correction stages are not color specific; instead, it’s the extend and depth of the paint defects and swirl marks.

I had taken excellent care of my Moonshine Metallic f82 but it still ended up needing a two-stage correction to eliminate all visible paint defects. It ended up looking flawless. After waiting one extra day before picking it up to ensure the ceramic coating had fully cured…we got stuck in a torrential rainstorm on our way home Cleanup was easy but I didn’t even get one day to enjoy it at home and take pictures with our two e92 M3s!

hh.m2c wrote

Yeah I understand it’s not color specific, I just know defects are easier to see on black cars. I know PPF will hide a lot of the light defects/swirls, no point taking clear coat off if I don’t need to. The plan is to correct the entire car, lay PPF over the front and ceramic coat the PPF and the rest of the car. But you’re right, might as well get the paint as perfect as possible before laying PPF or coating the car. I know if I see any defects afterward, it’ll drive me insane.

M3SQRD wrote

What I was trying to say is: start with the single-stage correction and, if it doesn’t cleanup all of the paint imperfections, have the second-stage correction done, too. Don’t commit to one or the other until the work is done. We thought a single-stage correction would capture everything but it did not so onto the second-stage correction…

Pheonix wrote

Are you wrapping the whole car?
Swirls and light scratches wont shown through PPF.
Here was my BMS Z4M.
Took me over 40 hours to get where I wanted it to be after many years of neglect🤩

TimmyTurbos wrote

Yeah this is the best approach here. Don't pay up front for something you may not need.

hh.m2c wrote

Quick question about paint correction before doing PPF and ceramic coating. My car is a 2020 in Black Sapphire Metallic with about 50k km. From what I can tell the paint is in pretty decent shape, nothing too rough, just the usual light swirls you’d expect.
[...]is a 1-stage paint correction usually enough for BSM before applying PPF and ceramic? Or do people usually end up needing a 2-stage to get it where it should be?

hh.m2c wrote

🫡🫡

Shop is charging $300 CAD/ stage of correction so not bad in the grand scheme of things. Will definitely decide after the first stage if the car needs some more love. Thanks

afadeev wrote

Lets get terminology straight first:
1-stage == just polish the paint. Usually good enough to address moderate swirl marks, scratches, and oxidation. Deeper scratches will require more work.
2-stage == compound the paint (using heavy cutting compound to remove defects), then polish (to restore gloss and eliminate hazing after compounding).

What your car requires (independent of paint color) depends entirely on the damage to the paint. After 50K miles, I would expect to need 2-stage to make it look 98% perfect.

Do you want to pay for 2-stage if you are PPF-ing anyway? Probably not.
Unless you are DIY-ing polishing, in which case, polish the car first (1-stage), see if it's good enough. If not, come back and compound+re-polish problem areas that need more attention, as appropriet!

PPF will hide a lot of defects, so making paint perfect before PPF is a waste of time and money, as it will get nicked later when you will be removing PPF (after it gets damaged, discolors, etc).

HTH,
a

hh.m2c wrote

My thinking is that if some areas that aren’t getting PPF will need a 2-step correction, it probably makes more sense to just 2-step the whole car.

hh.m2c wrote

I’ve polished my own cars before, but it’s a lot of work, so I’d rather have a trustworthy shop handle it lol.

afadeev wrote

True, but it is also a lot of fun. And most importantly, the car does NOT stay perfect forever, especially if you daily drive it. So ability to repolish newly scratched areas on your own is super handy. If I were to make an appointment with a detailer every time a car got paint swirls from someone or something bouncing off it in a parking lot, that process would become insanely expensive and cumbersome. If you can DIY the problem area during the next wash - then it's quick and easy.

HTH,
a

P.S.: For me, it's the same as DIY-ing oil changes - it takes longer for me to drive to a dealer and back then to drain/refill oil in my garage. The DIY convenience and time saving factors are huge for both oil changes and detailing.

hh.m2c wrote

But in my case I’m planning to cover the entire car with either PPF or a 5-year ceramic coating.

hh.m2c wrote

Because of that, I wouldn’t really be able to correct the paint later without removing either the coating or the film. So it makes more sense to just have everything properly corrected beforehand.

N1rve wrote

Swirl marks do not show through PPF. Only actual damage would like pitting or gouges in the paint. It’s actually a tactic I used for my gloss black window trim. They had swirl marks and I just clear PPF over it and it’s like new.

tdott wrote

Tell this guy that:

He removed the full PPF on his GT3rs because there were swirl marks underneath and it bothered him.

not doing paint correction before ppf is dumb, unless the owner is blind.