On Wed, 07 Jul 2004 12:59:05 +0000, Nathan Young wrote:

My Cherokee is in the paint shop, due out in a few weeks. Looking for
suggestions on maintaining a new Imron finish... Of course, I will
solicit input from the paintshop as well.

Do not buff until after the paint has cured. I've seen people that wanted
to buff their paint to show it off. It looked like a lamprey tried to eat
their car when they were done. Keep the buffing equipment away until the
paint has curred. The shop will probably wet/hand polish before they give
the plane to you. Leave it at that until the paint has fully cured.
Unless you're a big fan of circular swirls in your paint, be patient and
wait.

Wash your plane regularly, but do not wax until your paint has completely
cured. Once cured, wash and wax. Wax several times, once the paint is
cured, over the next week or two. Afterwards, wax on a regular cycle.
For cars, it should be at least several times per year. I'm not sure
about planes, but you *may* want to consider it a little more often; then
again, you'll be hangared. Using tricks like pledge on the leading edge
may work well to allow you to maintain a car-like wax schedule. Since
you'll be hangering it, I'd bet that a wax job, several times per year, is
probably going to be plenty.

Paint natually wants to oxydize. Maintaining a good wax job will minimize
it. Just the same, you may want to consider buffing anually. Just be
careful. I've seen so many paint jobs, professionally buffed, completely
messed up. Regardless of what ayone tells you, a hand buff is always best
because it's hardest to dig into or burn the paint. Electric buffers can
be a huge time saver, but they are great for burning and scratching paint.
Ever see a car with swirls all over it? That's from a bad buff job. It
does take someone skilled at using buffing equipment to not tear up your
paint. If you will have your plane buffed with an electric buffer, check
their results on many other planes before you turn them loose on your
baby. Personally, I'd much rather pay the premium price and have it hand
buffed. It may be more expensive, but it's seriously hard to find someone
that knows how to properly use buffing equipment, and even then, accidents
happen. Worse, most joes on the street actually think they can operate
one and don't have a problem digging swirls into your paint. They
think it's supposed to be like that. In other words, do you
want people looking at your paint, or the eye catching, shiny swirls all
over your plane? Use caution. Remember, buffing is supposed to make your
paint shiny and new. Buffing is not supposed to add eye catching swirls
to your paint.

Congrats!