Dear Pros:


Need advice on a flashlight-type paint correction light:

• Minimum lumens output to be able to clearly see fine scratches in white paint.
• LED vs xenon vs any other light source.
• Many manufacturers do not state lumens output. How do you know if it will be bright enough for white?
• Brands to avoid due to reliability or short-life issues.

Thank you in advance!

 

Hey - What ended up really useful for me is the LED 3 pack from Costco. Seems to be the perfect output where I don't even use halogens any more. Hope this helps.

 

Painters like the 3M sun gun. They go for around $300, have excellent color corrected CRI bulbs, and mimic natural sun light. It only stays on for about 45-90 seconds and is fan cooled. I don't know what detailers use.

 

I get a light I bought from autogeek today... 30 dollars, I figuired I d try it because I didn t want to spend the $$$ on the sun gun. I like you also have white which hides everything well.

 

As I said, I have many different lights, but nothing shows imperfections especially very fine marring like LED. I use the sun gun sometimes, but when working on a black car, you want LED

 

just unpacked the Brinkmann from autogeek( I ve seen it other places too) put it on my cream white Porsche and it did reveal marks I could only see in the sun before.... I ll have to work with it before I can comment further.

 

Chardonet,

You're smarter than I am for asking this question, as I recently spent several hours deciding what polishes and pads to use to do a medium correction on my car only to find, after I had washed the entire car and clayed the paint, that I had a hard time seeing my work. And of course it was cloudy outside so I couldn't even get a good reflection from sunlight. Thankfully, my car is yellow so the remaining imperfections don't show that much but I definitely underestimated the need for proper lighting.

 

used my brinkman 2 LED light... I found it brought out the swirls and fine marks which could only be seen in sunlight. Also found when checking a section I just worked that if I shut down the overhead lights and put the LED on that section that it really showed my final result in removing those marks. Once I realized what it took to get the swirls out and was happy with my pad and polishes I did sections one a a time and then checked each section with the light after I was done.