How To Sand Runs Out Of Clear Coat

How To Fix Clear Coat Runs!

Ever been wondering how to fix clear coat runs? Great news! Today you're going to learn how!

First off, whether you attempted to fix your own paint or even if your vehicle is pre-painted, sometimes a run just happens. The first main key goal is not to panic especially if you just sprayed your clear coat and you notice the run while it isn't dry. Any clear coat run can be removed and most of the time it's fixable without having to respray again. This is a example of what a clear coat run may look like. You can see here there is a ton of "orange peel" or a non reflective surface.

You can see the clear coat streaks here clearly, this is an example of a messy clear coat run. This is the streaks we are repairing today.

As you can see this is a horrible case of a run, the good news is, this is completely fixable once you are on the last stage of spraying your clear. If a run like this is already present then you have it a little easier because you don't have to wait for the paint to dry.

Wet Sand!

This is where our wet sand process comes into play and this is how to fix clear coat runs! Wet sanding is just like traditional sanding but done with specific wet sand paper and ensuring the panel stays wet during the process as well. Which leads us to our next point in the repair.

We see the run and now we have to get it out of our beautifully painted panel or even just to restore an old panel that had a run in it. So as stated above, yes, you are going to be wet sanding the surface that contains the run rather than dry sand. Wet sanding makes clean up a ton easier and allows you to sand without all the dust while still getting a glass smooth finish.

Depending on how bad the run is, this is what is going to determine what "grit" of sandpaper we use to fix this clear coat run. This one is pretty bad so we would start with a 1000 grit wet sand paper. Before starting ANY sanding, the first step is start soaking that wet sand paper, you want this drenched and super soft before tackling the project so do that before ANYTHING else.

Ok so you have your paper soaking, now lets clean/prep the surface. The reason we are cleaning it is to ensure no surface contaminates such as dirt, small stones, or even road tar/bugs are not present in top surface. That way when we go to sand, were cutting straight into the paint and trying out best to leave as little as scratches as possible.

This is how to fix clear coat runs, I know sanding it sounds crazy but just trust us! You're going to love the results when you are done.

This is what wet sandpaper typically looks like, this a 1000 grit wet sandpaper. Wet sandpaper brand is 3M, infamously known for making excellent detailing/cleaning products.

how to fix clear coat runs

Start Lower.

Were starting off with a 1000 grit in order to really get at that clear coat, here's what you're going to do, while your wet sandpaper was soaking you should now have a prepped and clean surface, using some wax and grease remover or a SMALL amount of dish soap in a spray bottle, mist your panel down and give it a good cleaning, this is going to pull all the contaminates off allowing you to attack that surface with a direct approach from your sandpaper.

Take a FLAT sanding block, NEVER sand without one of these, you want your paint finish to be FLAT and EVEN . Now take your wet panel and wet sandpaper and start moving it horizontally and vertically making repeated back and forth movements, NEVER sand in a circle, always left to right and up and down.

Continue to sand until the clear coat run looks pretty much even with the paint, you will begin to notice your top layer should look pretty dull. Anywhere you see a glossy shine to it means the surface is still uneven, if you sand through the clear coat this is where a touch up will be needed.

However if you managed to sand it out and the whole panel looks dull and even, you managed to eliminate the run, but now we have to clean up our scratches. If you ever begin to notice color instead of a milky looking wet run in the paint, stop sanding.

You at this point will probably be better off just taking it down to color in that whole section and making it smooth for a touch up area there. However if you are as stated above perfectly flat continue on!

Great job!

how to fix clear coat runs

This is a great example of buffing a vehicles surface with compound/polish.

From here move up in the grit of your sandpaper, we started at a 1000 grit paper and now were going up to 1500, the goal here is to use a finer piece of paper to remove the scratches and have smaller/more fine scratches in our paint. You're going to follow the same steps that you originally started with, soak your paper, keep the panel wet, and continue to move your sandpaper horizontally and vertically using a sand block.

In order from start to finish, you started at 1000, move up to 1500 then 2000, and then finally 2500. If you want to go INSANE shine mode, you can pick up some 3M Trizact wet sandpaper in 3000 and 5000 grit which will leave incredibly small fine scratches. After you have completed all of this, your panel should look flat and dull. See the image above.

From here the worst part is over. Here's how to fix clear coat runs after wet sanding! Grab a buffer or dual action polisher or your personal polisher of choice.

Get To Polishing!

You will need 2 pads at a minimum, one for compound and one for polish. Were going to use the compound pad to remove scratches and restore the glossy look to the surface. Everyone I cannot express this enough though, if you have never buffed a surface before, please invest in a dual action polisher. The rotations and how the device works is much more friendly and greatly reduces the chances of you burning your clear coat.

Burning your clear coat means you held the buffer on there for too long and the top layer of your clear coat during the repair and it removes too much clear or leaves dull marks etc… A dual action polisher works way more efficiently and makes it a lot safer. It's constantly moving and most the pads are vented. We HIGHLY recommend Chemical Guys Products. We utilize them ourselves here when we clean/detail our vehicles.

They have great machines, but we really think their compounds/polishes/detailing chemicals are their high point.

However being that this would probably be your first time buffing/polisher, check out the Harbor Freight dual action polisher. It's a great entry level great budget dual action polisher that gets great results! Let's return to the panels!

how to fix clear coat runs

Ok before doing ANY buffing make sure you have a specific compound product and a specific polishing product. You want to separate pads that are different colors so we don't cross contaminate compound and polish. Compound is going to cut into the clear and remove the scratches, the polish is what's going to make it look "mirror like." Lets get to buffing that body work!

Add about 4 dots the size of a dime on the top, bottom, left, and right side of your compound buff pad. From here push it on the surface to apply some compound to the panel you are working on.

The goal here is to work in small sections at a time and spread that compound out effectively. Turn your buffer/polisher on a low setting and begin to work it into your paint. Once it's all smeared into the panel, turn it up to actually buff out the scratches moving at a steady pace with a small bit of pressure and just "guide" your buffer around as it removes scratches. Depending on how bad the scratches are and how much you sand, a couple of passes may be necessary.

From here you are going to wipe away the remaining residue and then hook up your polishing bad, repeating the same process as you did with the compound, again a couple of passes might be necessary for mirror like shine. Once you have finished polishing again, wipe away any residue with a clean microfiber cloth.

The final step is real simple, apply a wax of your choice and buff off like normal. Your end panel should be now perfectly clean, little or no scratches, and extreme gloss on the top of the panel.

Your panel was also just waxed (remember, we removed wax/grease earlier) and now has a protective layer on top to protect your newly perfected clear coat. If you are working on factory paint or a paint job that only has 1-2 layers of thinly sprayed clear coat, be careful, you can go through those layers quickly!