- Hey, YouTube viewers.
This is Donny Smith, and welcome to this video series
that is designed to help you passed the ASE exam.
Now this video series is specifically
for the paint refinish,
and what we're going to do is we'll go through the tasks,
and give you the knowledge to pass the test.
What this is not, this is not really
your prep test type book.
It's not just test questions.
If you want that, there is a link down in the description.
You can get more information about that.
What this is, this basically goes through all the tasks
that you will need to know to pass the test.
(car screeches)
Now we've already talked about safety in a previous video.
This video, we're going to concentrate
on surface preparation,
and the first task we're going to talk about
is inspect, remove, store, and replace exterior trim
and components necessary for proper surface preparation.
Now, this is important steps and I've seen it skipped
or missed many times, maybe not so much in the body shops
as it would at a school,
but it's really just thinking
about what you're going to do.
During repair plan or whenever you're thinking
about the steps you're going to take to paint something,
you kind of have to have the end in mind before you start.
And go ahead and get the car ready to paint,
you know, to prep instead of waiting
to the last minute until you have to do everything.
For example, it talks about exterior trim.
If there's a molding that's going to have to come off
or door handle, take it off
before you ever do anything else.
I mean, do that first.
Get it ready.
For example, I've seen moldings left
on the car till right at the end,
and then you're trying to get it off,
and then you have to go back
and sand where the molding was at,
or the door handle, you end up scratching the door handle
or belt molding, you know something like that.
So it's a really good idea to go ahead
and strip the car down whenever you're getting ready
to prep, ready to sand, wash, whatever.
Go ahead and get all that stuff off of there,
that way whenever you're sanding,
you're not having to be so careful,
trying to avoid scratching an adjacent molding
or anything like that.
So, get everything off the car
before you ever start prepping the surface.
Okay this next task is another one often overlooked,
but it can lead to many problems
and that is soap and water wash entire vehicle;
use appropriate cleaner to remove contaminants.
Now, before you start sanding on the car,
let's say you got it stripped-down ready to go
and I see this a lot, you just start sanding
and you think I'm going to wash it
before I get in the booth so it'll be cleaned.
Well, that may be partially true,
but whenever you're sending, you're smearing
around those silicones and contaminants on the car.
So, you want to get that off first
before you start working on car,
not only is this going to make sure
you don't have any problems, like fish eyes
or adhesion failure or things like that,
washing the car first is also going to save money,
and that is because of being able to wash car first,
you're getting rid of the waxes,
the silicones, the contaminants,
and that's not going to load your sandpaper as fast
cause if you leave all those coatings,
you sand just for a second,
those contaminants load the sandpaper
and you're going through a lot more sandpaper
and taking longer, so it's taking more effort,
costing you more money if you're not washing the car first.
So, be sure and wash the car with soap and water.
Use an appropriate cleaner, you know something
like a wax and grease remover.
Every paint brand has their own version of it,
but as long as it's designed to clean off silicones...
Be sure and wash the car with soap and water,
wipe it down and then you can start your prep work.
Okay, the next task that we're going to look at
is inspect and identify type of finish,
surface condition and film thickness;
develop and document a plan for refinishing
using a total product system.
And again this is important to do
and this talks about developing your repair plan,
making sure that you go through the steps
before you start working on the car.
For example, it talks about type of finish.
Is it lacquer?
There's not a lot of that around these days,
but there could be.
Is it base clear?
You have a tricoat coming?
What is it that you're having to do?
You want to know that up front.
The next thing is the film thickness.
This is very important.
They got the little magnetic gauges,
that will work.
They're not as effective,
but they got the digital gauges, as well.
Now the digital gauges has to be a metal surface,
but go around and gauge your paint
on the different panels
that you're going to be prepping and painting
because of it's 10 mils or more,
you may have to strip that or partially strip it.
Too much paint coatings can cause adhesion problems
It can cause your gaps.
You keep putting more coatings on your edges,
and that might cause a problem where you open the door
and it knocks a chip off after you painted the last time.
That's the last thing you want, is to open the door
and then knock a chip of paint off,
you know things like that.
So, if it's over 10 mils you may have to partially strip it.
Now you don't have to completely strip it necessarily
if the paint is in good condition,
it's not cracking, peeling or anything like that,
it's just too thick, you can go with,
this is what we do,
there's different methods of doing it,
but we start out with 180 and we take it down just
about to the desired mil thickness,
six mils or whatever we're wanting to get it down to,
and then we jump a hundred grit at a time.
So we go from 180,
well, then we go to 220.
That's what we use.
That's not quite a hundred grit.
And we go around the entire service that we went with 180
to minimize the 180 grit scratches with 220 grit.
And then once we do that, we go with 320.
And then we go around the entire car with 320
to minimize the 220 grit scratches.
And then we jump a little bit from 320,
and then we go to 500.
And that's not exactly a hundred grit,
but it's pretty close
and we go over the entire car with 500 grit.
And 500 grit's just going to minimize the scratches,
you know the 320 grit scratches,
and then that's what we paint on top of.
We seal and paint on top of 500 scratches,
now your paint system may be a little bit different.
Water-born more may require 600.
Just kind of determine, read your technical data sheet
to find out what the sandpaper grade
recommendation is to finish that out.
Generally, four to six hundred
is what generally is used for final sanding before paint.
And also you want to check the surface condition.
Is it cracking or peeling
or is there any problems with that paint?
A lot of times, problems like that's going to require
you to strip it completely.
Now, there's different ways to strip,
whether you're allowed to use chemical stripper or not.
You can do use a DA sander.
You can sand it all down with 80 grit,
whatever is recommended, however your SOP prefers.
36 or 80 is probably what most shops are going to use
if they if they sand it with a DA.
If it's one panel, you can have it sanded down pretty fast.
If you got access to some type of media blaster...
There's different ways to do it,
but if there's a problem with that paint,
you're probably going to have to strip
that down to the metal and then come back
with whatever system you use or different...
You can use, there's metal treatment you can use
or there's self-etch primers or there's epoxy primers.
Depending on your paint system, they all vary a little bit,
it's going to determine what method repair method
that you take from there.
Then it says develop and document a plan,
and basically I just called that a repair plan.
And what that is, is basically determining what all
you need to do up front before you start on it,
and then that way, whenever you start to do it,
you'll have a step-by-step process
to make sure you don't skip things,
like remove that molding
or to check the paint mil thickness.
So you'll know, do I need to strip this down partially
or do I just final sand it?
That way you'll know up front the steps
that you need to take.
It is my goal to keep these videos short,
so that's all were going to cover in this video.
Just give you little chunks at a time,
let you absorb that, and then you can watch the next video.
Down below is a link to the test prep books
that I have, but also there's a link that will take you
to all these videos if you're wanting
to go through more than one video at a time
and take you through the entire playlist.
So be sure and check that out
to go through the ones that I've already uploaded
and as they become available,
they'll also be put on the site, as well.
Thanks for watching this video.
I hope this helps, and good luck with your ASE exam.