Clearcoat paint offers several coats of protection for your car's underlying pigment paint. After you've applied a new enamel or lacquer paint to your car, you will need to add several coats of clearcoat to protect that new paint. When the clearcoat dries, your car will be blotchy. To get that new paint job looking smooth and shiny, wet sand and buff the clearcoat.
Immerse 1500-grit wet sandpaper in a bucket of water. Remove the sandpaper from the water and run it over the surface of your clearcoat. Work back and forth in long, lean strokes parallel to the ground. If you jerk the sandpaper or work in circles, you'll create scratches that will be visible. Rinse the wet sandpaper as often as you need to moisten it and remove paint specks.
Repeat the wet sanding process with 2000-grit sandpaper, which is finer. This will remove the imperfections and blotchiness from your new clearcoat.
Rinse the car with water and dry it with clean cotton towels when you have finished wet sanding.
Squirt rubbing compound onto a foam pad, then bring the foam pad up to the surface of your car. Work the foam pad across the car on long back-and-forth motions, just as you performed the wet sanding. Use as much rubbing compound as you need to coat the area. Apply rubbing compound to one panel of your car, then wipe it off following the technique in Step 5. When you have finished, move on to another panel.
Rub the rubbing compound off with clean cotton cloths. When you have finished this step, the car's clearcoat paint job will be clean, neat and a little bit dull. A final buffing with paste wax will restore your car's shine.
Apply paste wax to your car with a foam pad. Work the wax over one area of your car, then wait a couple of minutes for the wax to haze or cloud up. After it clouds, use a clean cotton cloth to wipe it away. Wiping away the wax will bring the shine back to your car. Buff the paste wax into the surface of your car until you can no longer see traces of wax. Continue to work in this manner until the entire car's clearcoat has been waxed.
