[JTruck]

Originally Posted by Adam's Polishes

^^^Correct!

Speaking in generalities here since every car is a little different you have somewhere around 4-6 mils of total coating thickness on your paint. Thats the total of the primer, basecoat (color) and clear.

Each mil is 25.4 microns (µ)

Again, speaking in general terms your breakdown is somewhere in the range of:

50 µ primer
25-50 µ base
50-75 µ clear

Now... lets even assume you got a car painted on a Friday, by the laziest robot on the assembly line having a bad day and only got 50µ of clear coat.

Now to put this all into perspective: my testing (which I have documented and can share here) the combination of a flex 3401 + microfiber cutting pad + paint correcting polish at max speed and pressure followed by white foam and Finishing polish removed and average of 4µ-5µ of clear coat. Thats typically more than enough to knock down even moderate to heavy swirls. Scratches and deeper RIDS would be another story.

So assuming you do one heavy correction and have thin clear to start with:

50µ - 5µ = 45µ remaining.

If you do a good job of washing, reducing damage, and only need to do fine polishes to maintain a couple times a year going forward I tested our white foam + finishing polish to remove <1µ with multiple passes. If you were to 2 touchup polishes a year for a decade you'd still have more than 25µ of clear left to work with. Again, this all assuming you got the thinnest clear coat and went bananas on your first correction.

For most guys, starting closer to 75µ you've got quite a lot more to work with. Long story short - if you maintain the vehicle properly and only do touchup passes of light polish as needed you're going to be well onto your next vehicle before its ever a concern. I'd be shocked if the majority of the guys here even owned their cars 5 years from now. In times of economic stability most people average 40-50 months between new car purchases. 2012 when things were tough the US hit the highest interval between new cars ever 71 months, almost 6 years. No one keeps a car long enough anymore to ever worry about 'running out of clear coat'

I want to know how much of a pain in the ass adding that symbol in everywhere on this post was.