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I don't plan on doing any polishing. The 5th coat is nice, flat and shiny with minimal orange peel. Will the shine last without doing the polishing and buffing?





According to the Charger school of 'roll your own'.. you 'should' be able to start hitting the paint with the compound, polish and wax. It will take time to get the desired level of gloss/shine back. From the gist of what I read, Charger felt that the slightly non-fully-cured paint would be a little easier and softer to work with...

Most schools of thought and recommendations from paint shops is that you should let the fully cure before going after the compounding, polishing and waxing - especially since our paint jobs are not being baked on. So in theory we have to let the paint job fully air dry to get to a reasonable level of hardness before those finishing steps. The theory behind 'waiting' til it cures harder is this.. the wax, when it is finally applied, will be acting like a sealant... water won't get through to the paint and conversely remaining evaporants in the paint job will have a harder time evaporating through the wax seal.

On my car, I waited about 4 weeks after the final coat was applied. This was partly because the weather ( rain and humidity ) were pretty bad. But I waited out the paint job and gave it that extra time to cure so that if anything went wrong I wouldn't be able to blame myself for rushing the final stage of this process.

Your shine 'should' last for a while. Possibly rain 'might' give you the occassional waterspot.. but basically the integrity of the paint will hold up... long enough to get more cured. At that point you are going to have to wet sand it to begin the final compounding, polishing and waxing... so any degradation of the shine or gloss up to that point really won't matter.

If you garage queen the car and keep it not exposed to the heat and uv of the sun... and keep it away from condensation that may occur during the transition from day to night and vice-a-versa, will help you to hold on to the initial unprotected /unfinished shine...

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Last edited by Marq; 09/18/06 08:04 PM.