Recognize Quality Car Paint
While new cars are typically outfitted with factory paint jobs, used cars may have been repainted for a number of reasons. Depending on where, when, and how this paint was applied, its quality can vary quite dramatically. Typically, car paint quality is based almost entirely on its thickness. Knowing how to recognize quality car paint that is of the correct thickness can help prevent excessive cash expenditures in the years to come.
Steps
- Understand ideal paint thickness levels.
- Before you can recognize quality car paint, it is important to learn what the appropriate thickness of car paint should be. Car paint is typically measured in mils, a unit designed specifically for vehicle paint jobs. On average, quality car paint should be measured at between 6 and 8 mils.
- Examine the car visibly for signs of quality car paint.
- Car paint that is of a high quality will be uniform in color, with no areas of fading or splotching. Perform both a close up and a distance examination of the car to get a complete picture of paint quality.
- Use a magnet to measure the thickness of the paint on the car.
- A mechanical gauge which houses a magnet can be purchased at most car repair and maintenance stores. Use this to determine exactly the thickness of the paint job in question. Place the gauge against the exterior of the car being examined, and then carefully pull the gauge away. Calibrated springs in the gauge will tell you exactly how much force was required to remove the magnet housed in the gauge.
- In most cases, the lower the amount of effort required to remove the gauge, the thinner the amount of paint. Read all instructional booklets which may have been packaged with the product to correctly interpret gauge readings.
- Be aware that this device can only be used when measuring paint thickness on steel portions of the car.
- Use an eddy current device to measure the thickness of the paint on the car.
- An eddy current device contains a coil which can generate a magnetic field. This magnetic field then stimulates other magnetic fields in the body of the car, which consequently send another signal to the device indicating the thickness of the paint. Readings are displayed on a LCD panel.
- Unlike a mechanical gauge, which evaluates the thickness of paint on steel, an eddy current device is only able to measure the thickness of paint on aluminum. Because of these specifications, a product which contains both a mechanical and an eddy current device may be ideal.
- Use an ultrasonic device to measure the thickness of the paint on the car.
- The thickness of the paint on plastic portions of your car can be determined using this piece of equipment. Like other types of ultrasound technology, this machines sends out waves, which then evaluate the thickness of the paint in question.
- Finished.
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