2008 Scion xB: Whatcolorizat?

I see orange peel on all sorts of cars these days. And Toyota is not exactly known for their great paint.

Sorry, whats orange peel?

The scion XB has got to be one of the ugliest cars in production right now. Michael Angelo could paint that thing, and it would still be ugly. The XB is the one car you can pull up to and laugh at when you're driving in a Pontiac Aztec. There is a fine line between being different and just being a dork. I love seeing old people driving the XB thinking that their kinda hip.

OMG... Chevy you mean Michelangelo????!

At least your weekend was better than Josh Sadlier's.

OMG... I can't believe I misspelled Michelangelo. I guess I'll have to get rid of my extensive art collection now.

Glad it wasn't furping banana peel.

daytona500;
 
orange peel is when the paint on the car wears off;
like when you peel an orange ( hence the name.)

Orange peel is a certain kind of finish that may develop on painted surfaces and cast surfaces[1]. The texture resembles the bumpy surface of the skin of an orange (fruit) hence the name.
 
Gloss paint sprayed on a smooth surface (such as the body of a car) should also dry into a smooth surface. However, various factors can cause it to dry into a bumpy surface resembling the texture of an orange peel. The orange peel phenomenon can then be smoothed out with ultra-fine sandpaper, but it can be prevented altogether by changing the painting technique or the materials used. Orange peel is typically the result of improper painting technique, and is caused by the quick evaporation of thinner, incorrect spray gun setup (e.g., low air pressure or incorrect nozzle), spraying the paint at an angle other than perpendicular, or applying excessive paint.
 
In some situations, such as interior house paint, the orange peel texture is generally desirable. In this case, a texture paint is generally applied with a spray gun. The texture is then painted over with the appropriate color. When painting walls, orange peel can also develop by using a roller with too little paint or too thick a paint and the surface dries before the texture can level.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_peel_%28effect%29

^in all offense to wikipedia, a number of paint guys i've talked to say that orange peel in it self is on a defect. And the truth is it required alot of of wet sanded / respray to get out.
 
Its also not really part of the paint, but its part of the clear coat

Don't feel bad, xB, I've seen orange peel on lots of BMWs, 5ers in particular, for some reason.

The worst orange peel paint i've ever seen was on a green 1995 Chrysler Cirrus when they first hit the streets. I mean it was B-A-D.

Lately, I see orange peel even in high end models as Texases noted. It surprises me as in the past people would not take delivery of an expensive new car with that defect. Somehow people don't seem to care anymore. Could it be that with new finishes, they spray the clearcoat over the base before the base has cured sufficiently?

Karjunkie - Could be.
 
I've got orange peel over a significant portion of my 06 Honda Civic SI. No big deal, as long as I have to look close to see it. If I can see it from 10 feet, it's a problem.
 
My father's 1999 Porsche Boxster (deep blue) has no orange peel. And it's now almost a 10 year old paint job, exposed to several full blown winters where it was covered in salt, and the paint looks absolutely fantastic (although nowadays it's driven about 1000-2000 miles a year and gets 2-3 wax jobs in that time period). That paint fights age well.
 
I bought my honda and my subaru with the knowledge that their paint was thin and would chip easily. I hope that plenty of wax and loving will help them fight aging, but I know the paint is no longer of the same quality as, say, an 80s/90s Porsche.
 
Joe

I see orange peel on the majority of cars I look at. But then I am pretty particular when it comes to paint jobs on new cars. My truck has it pretty bad in some spots, our car has it and I have seen it on Hummers, Lexus', Mercedes and the like...
 
I don't mind to much on "economy" cars, but if were to ever buy a "luxury car" or spend over 30K on a vehicle, and the car had orange peel, I would probably ask that the car be taken to the body shop and have it removed. I would think that with today technology that the automakers could come up with a way to efficiently and properly prep their vehicles for painting so this doesn't develop...

Orange peel is a defect from the factory, not a result of rocks or weather or whatever. Simply, BAD paint job. I saw this REALLy bad recently on a friends 06 Tacoma. It was horrible all on the lower part of the truck.

Here comes the question:
 
Which car/truck/SUV in the LT fleet has the worst orange peel?

Mopar - Not sure if that was directed at me. If so, I know. I was referring to the overall low quality of the paint, which is indicated by orange peel, easy chipping of the paint, and poor resistance to weathering.
 
Joe

My Tundra has it bad on the lower portions. I was wondering if they cheap out on the lower sections because you normally don't look there or it gets a lot of road grime?

Some vehicles use a vinyl coating on the lower reaches to reduce chips. It looks like orange peel, but it isn't the same. Not sure if your Tundra is one of those or not.

Karjunkie - I think people just don't know what to look for. People just know a badge, make judgments from that, and buy a car. A Scion? Its made by Toyota and everyone knows Toyotas never have quality problems, so that paint must be perfectly normal. A BMW? Well if I'm paying all this money it obviously is a quality product right? So the average consumer just won't check to see if their particular vehicle has a defect. Brand reputation doesn't mean individual vehicle flaws don't happen.

What I don't understand about orange peel on today's cars are most are painted by robot. Yet some cars have it, others don't. You would think with computer controlled robots, you wouldn't have such variability in paint quality.
 
Some of the nicest paint finishes I've seen were sprayed by hand on Cannondale bicycles.

Stingray - Robots, ok, but are the painting conditions done right?
 
I.e. is the paint sprayed in "one coat" (i.e. primer/paint/clear all in one), is each coat given proper time to dry, etc. etc.

Volunteering at a fundraiser car wash gave me an appreciation for a good paint job. I was thoroughly impressed being up close to a mid-90's Mercedes E-class. It didn't appear to have been particularly pampered, there were a number of dings and chips from road debris. But the paint that remained felt like ceramic or glass, just so smooth.

mopar424, joefrompa
 
While I dont doubt your knowledge...
 
most factory paint jobs show to some extent orange peel.
 
From various forums where car paint is dicussed the people that do it for a living claim, that without sanding/ sparying again, organge peel is 'normal' and not a defect.

Orange peel isn't normal, my Mazda's don't have any such thing.
 
If it's so normal it should have it, it doesn't.

"my Mazda's don't have any such thing"
 
Every car has it, just matter of the degree. Also, it's easier to spot it on darker color cars. By the way, orange peel is normal these days with the new "tree-hugger" paint that every manufacture is using.

With respect, I suspect anyone in the auto painting business is going to tell you that orange peel is "normal" because they don't want to be re-doing a lot of their work.
 
My Mazda (3) also has a very nice paint job. There is some orange peel, but the "texture" of it is very fine. Far less noticeable than on our GMC, which is still far better than that photo shows the Scion to have.

After googling the issue here are two interesting results:
 
1) 3M corporation that manufactures auto paints says that "excessive" orange peel is a defect. Obviously that doesn't help you make an argument with the manufaturer or the dealer that will always tell you that it's not excessive.
 
2) Dan Stauft,a Paint Process Engineer at the Corvette manufacturing facility in Bowling Green, Kentucky in the 90s blamed orange peel problems on the requirements of the EPA to use a low solvent ratio in paints to meet more stringent environmental standards than are applied elsewhere, as in Europe and Japan. He said "in the US, manufacturers are required to use high solids paints, with a ratio of about 60% solids to 40% solvent. To better flow the paint out, we need to add more solvent. The problem is that the EPA won't let us add aditional solvents. These solvent restrictins stem from the EPA's limits on Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). VOCs, which are in almost all solvents, are a cause of low level ozone - read smog - forcing these restrictions. In other countries, these restrictions either don't exist or are more lenient, allowing manufacturers to use low solids paints (as low as 30% solids to 70% solvent), which tend to have a smoother appearance."

I'm surprised by this thread - I thought orange peel was the norm on new cars. The telltale ripples are pretty noticeable on everything from Fords to Mercedes Benzes... but more so on solid gloss colors (as opposed to metallic). It's one reason I bought a car with metallic paint, actually.
 
Model airplanes and cars were a hobby of mine at one point. Car modelers do everything possible to avoid orange peel, including spending ridiculous amounts of time with super-ultra-really-really-fine sandpaper and polishing compound, unless they're good enough to get it right on the first spray. It's easier than with real cars, because we don't mind poisoning ourselves with relatively small amounts of spray paint.
 
The trade-offs of orange peel (ie lower VOCs) is fine with me. It's much better than the consequences of the first change in regulations around 1990 that led to a generation of paint that would fade badly and/or peel off.

Thank goodness it's no banana peel or coconut shell. Can someone explain to me why people buy this sandbox of a car? I think my cat wants to crap in it every time one passes by.

Haha - that's a good one 730. I got a good laugh out of that. :)