This might sound stupid, but kinda makes sense to me (at 2:05 am), what about using a high density foam roller for the clear coat?

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I NEVER double coat urathane clear...as you found out doing that will make it run very ez. I finish my basecoat, clean the gun and mix clear and start spraying it. Soon as i can touch it without leaving a fingerprint, i put on the next (same for 3rd if nec). Last time I double coated a finish was with laquer. With acrylic enamel you can double coat the final coat with the last being an extremely thinned mist to even out metallic mottleing. You can double coat basecoat because it basicly is a laquer though modified to allow clear urathane to bond to it.

bump for an update?????

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It isnt re-creation....its recreation!!!!

I'm in a similiar situation. It's my first job and I've been getting as much advice as possible and then seeing what works for me.
I am also using a HF gun, and my Craftsman 3 gallon compressor. Not ideal, but for a single panel off job, it seems to be working. I primed in Urethane biege, put down a white base and Corvette Millenium yellow. I love the color. I;m using Nason's line throughout and it's inexpensive and pretty easy to work with. I had to relearn everything when I switch from primer to paint. I thought I'd take it slow and use the 1.0mm detail gun that came in my HF kit on the yellow coat. I learned not to swith Horse in the middle of the race. While the 1.4mm tip may be larger than most recommend, it was working well. The 1.0mm gun started pulsating and spitting (I think the tip came loose from the face of the gun) and left some nasty runs on the quarter panel. For better or worse, I tried to use a foam brush to collect the excesse. I'll look at it today, but I think I'll be doing some sanding on this base coat. and spraying a third coat and hopefully final coat. 800 wet sand for this, maybe? I do have difficulty deciding if the spray is right, I have 60 psi on the compressor reg set, I'm turning the paint srew closed and back out 2 full turns and the material screw closed nad out 1.5 turns. Don't have a pressure gauge on the gun, so I'm guessing and trying to keep the gun 8" away and constant speed. I try for the 1 seconf "cigar" pattern on the paper, but would be open to any advice that applies to my setup.
Side note: I'm thinking about leaving the drip rails off, any issues with doing this? They are a little dented, from when they came off.

[This message has been edited by ApexNC (edited 05-27-2007).]

you can sand the runs out of the basecoat after maybe 30 mins with #400. Then just respray that area if you want. Runs in the clear are far less of a problem, even with 2 or 3 coats, you can do a lot of wet sanding on those. On really bad body places like surface rust, I even let the primer intentionally run so I have to put on less recoats when block sanding. I prefer doing that over surface glazing putty which shrinks really bad over time.

I use a 1.4 tip for painting everything. On the fluid adjustment, I hold the trigger back and unscrew it till the trigger wont go back any further for max fluid delivery. A novice might run into trouble with that though. For the pattern adjustment, I seldom widen it more than 1/2 a turn. Pressure itself is your preference and what your painting. I use very low pressure for things like jams, but crank it up for doing hoods and roofs. I really dont do a complete car with one constant setting.

[This message has been edited by rogergarrison (edited 05-27-2007).]

Thx Roger, I fear I didn't get the catylst or reducer mixed well on my last coat today, It's been two hours and it's still a little tacky. I moved it into the sun to help speed it up. To try to sand runs out now I think would gum up the paper. So if 90% of a panel, in this case roof and fastback came out good, but if you have a run, can you take a run down without respraying? I'm doing single stage on this job and I plan to ultimately wet sand 1000, 1500, rubbing compound, polishing compound and wax.
I think to get a run I'll need 500 grit at least and I don't know how that will blend. I'm discovering this car is all curves.

I did my car in a booth and did it all right but for some reason after i sprayed clear over the metalic red (1 hour dry from base to clear) some crap that was in a corner jumped alll over the car so when you ger like 6" from the paint you can see small amounts of crap in the paint. But from 1 foot off it looks awsome!!

An update on my panel off paint.

I had real problems with orange peel. Sanding with 1500 wet or dry and polishing with a bonnet and polishing compound seems to be cutting down the orange peel. Some minor damage to the color coat occured--I've kinda decide I'll just have to live with it.

If I were doing it over again, knowing what I know now, I'm not sure it would be panel off. The nice part of panel off is that you can paint around to the back of the panels and paint the chassis (I used satin black engine paint.) I certainly wouldn't attempt to paint all of the panels (in a panel off paint job) all at once. I had real problems backing into one panel while I was painting another. And hanging the panels from the rafters left some areas on the panels very thin on basecoat (so that they required repainting.)

My car is striking looking. The red is very bright--the color was straight red pigment with a little white and then binders and solvent. I don't like the ZR 2 hood at all, probably will paint up a plain hood and replace it. I don't like the big f***in' scoop at all. The integrated rockers (Archie's) do look pretty nice, tho. I have a spare hood and a wingless rear deck, gonna paint them to match so I can experiment with different looks.

When I get it cleaned up from polishing and waxing, I'll post some pics. Gotta post pics of my Mr. Mikes seat too.

Some pics take while putting it back together:

[This message has been edited by Brian Lamberts (edited 05-29-2007).]

Rogers point about painting the panels flat did help me, the hanging panels tended to run on me more. Hard to paint the nose "flat" as it has so many curves and slopes. I ended up with several runs there. I have sanded them down, but am back to white base in several places on the right side of the nose panel. Now I have to decide if I have to repaint the whole thing white and yellow again, or just spot paint with yellow and try to blend. Using a razor at various angels helped shave the run, but I ended up sanding 500 grit to get it all out. I really goofed the hood. I didn't have me tweezers or high density roller with me. On One spot a nat landed on the hood and I tried to pick it off, my gloved fingers did more damage than the nat. Another spot was where painting the panels flat got me. I had the gun at a 90* angle over the panel and paint dripped from the "vent" on top of the gun. It was a nice fat drop that panic'd me enough I reach for my towel...which of course did more damage to the spot. Now I have this 2" diameter imprint in the paint. That should be fun to fix, I'd hate to have to sand the whole hood to repaint. Open to suggestion on that one as well. I'm still not sure if Yellow will level out in color or just keep getting darker with each coat. If it only gets so "solid" I could build up some layers to match. My experience thus far is that this yellow seems to have endless shades. I also discovered after things dried and I got out of the sun and over being "snow blind" from the white panels, that I was light with the yellow in spots. I assume I can surface sand and add color in those spots (?)



Is it recommended to hand (block) sand these 1000, 1500 ? I'm thinking about buying a circular sander/buffer for the compound, polish and wax.
I'm cheap and would be open to any recommendations of what to get.

[This message has been edited by ApexNC (edited 05-30-2007).]

I had those same problems. If you sand fairly deep into the clearcoat, you can just spot paint the places where it's gone through to the primer or where the basecoat seems thin. Then clearcoat the whole part again. I don't know what to tell you about the color deepening--the red I used covers really well--I have some yellow of the same brand and it doesn't.

On my parts that got really awful about boo-boos (hair, dust, bugs) and runs and sags, I ended up sanding the whole panel with a vibrating random orbital sander (electric) and 180 grit paper. I used circular disks even tho the foot of the sander is square--just faster to change self adhesive disks. And then spot painted basecoat as needed and recoated with clearcoat. I'm hoping that the matte surface created by the sander will adhese with the clearcoat.

I figured out why my gun was making such bad orange peel--I was working with too low base (set at the compressor) air pressure, so that the paint wasn't properly atomizing. Will help next time (if that day ever comes again) I need to paint with my HVLP guns.

For the existing orange peel (and there are spots with sandiness from overspraying other parts) I'm using 1500 grit wet or dry with lots of water to keep the paper from loading up. My clearclear coat is a minimum of 6 weeks old, so it's pretty hard. I'm using a two speed polisher with a 12 inch bonnet and I'm using polishing compound to bring up some shine--I'm probably gonna have to use a glazing compound prior to trying to wax. But the process does seem to take the orange peel down to a less noticeable level.

I will be doing some painting this week, gonna paint up a plain hood and a wingless decklid. My spray guns have top vents, too, as they are gravity feed HVLP guns. It really helps to keep the vents clean and properly oriented. My cheap gun from Harbor Freight (about $19) has an aim-able vent and it looks like it's possible to even attach some small diameter hose to the vent. My more expensive gun (a Devilbiss I bought new for about $100) doesn't have the aim-able vent, but it's given no indication of wanting to drip either. If you're having trouble with angles and dripping, prop the hood up a bit to get a better angle--perhaps to 25 degrees (45 degrees is halfway between verticle and horizontal.) Also, only filling the cup halfway will tend to minimize dripping

A short review on my guns--the Devilbiss when properly set up is a really nice gun--but not $80 better than the Harbor Freight one. The Harbor Freight gun works pretty darned well and is certainly okay for the home mechanic. My Devilbiss has a 1 quart metal cup on it--the Harbor freight has a 1 pint plastic cup. I actually prefer the plastic cup, even with paint in it, you can see the paint level in the cup. When painting, I never fill either cup more than 3/4 full--and usually don't fill the quart cup more than 1/2 full. Paint isn't heavy, but 3 or 4 hours of painting makes my forearms cramp up (it's a combination of a motion like hoisting a beer and squeezing a tennis ball for hours at a time.) Loading smaller quantities of paint prolongs the time I can paint (takes longer, tho, too.)

Misc. stuff:

The other thing I found is that those pint and quart cups that cottage cheese and yogurt comes in make pretty nice mixing cups for paint. Base coat has an indefinite pot life--doesn't dry as long as it's sealed up tight, so I store the reduced paint in a clean pickle jar (I prefer Vlasics, btw ) Top coat, of course, gets mixed as I use it (it's catalyzed) can't be stored.

Some shop practices. If possible, put your compressor outside the work area--helps keep the compressor clean, minimizes the exposure of the compressor motor to flammable fumes, and the air is gonna be dryer outside (you are keeping the floor wetted down, right?) Drain the compressor tank every hour or so--more if you live in a damp climate. Use a water trap between your first run of hose (25 feet) and your second run of hose to the gun--the first run of hose allows the air to cool and there will be condensation--and at the water trap, have a pressure regulator to bring the air pressure to a proper level. Then at the gun, there should be another pressure valve and an inline water and oil filter.

And keeping the floor wetted will help a lot, but it's pretty important not to spray the water (no splashing,) just let it flow over the concrete surface--helps keep the dust down and the paint and clearcoat don't want to stick to a wet floor either.