I wanted to give a big thank you to everyone who spends the time to help on this forum. It is because of that I felt comfortable tackling the painting portion of my restoration. Big thank you to @Barry for taking all my calls over the past week to ask questions along the way about various things and options. I am restoring a 67 Beetle, and this past weekend I got the body through base and clear. I learned a few lessons along the way. I was tepid about the base but that sprayed out way easier than I expected. I used Motobase LV L360 Seablu form Chad's that I had tweaked slightly. I layed on two coats in my makeshift Harbor Freight garage tent paint booth in slow reducer, and got complete coverage. to be totally sure I did a final coat in very slow. I got a little heavier than I should on the roof, and actually got a sag. I sprayed it like the first two coats but the very slow flowed a bit different so I ended up being heavy based on trying to match how the paint laid out on the first rounds. To fix the sag, after talking to Barry, I waited a couple hours and wet sanded it out, then recovered in base.
Pictures after base:
And here is my base sag:
I put it away for the night and the next day I cleared 4 coats. The first three went great. I did not notice much trash and didn't see any sags or runs. I did not spend much time looking though as I was spraying then mixing what was needed for the next batch then a cold drink then back in the tent. On coat 4 my inexperience began to show. I made a mistake after cutting in the trunk area and moving to the roof I forgot to check my horn position and laid one narrow stripe down the center of the roof. I couldn't stop though, so I moved on through the rest of my spray pattern with my horn position corrected. I will need to flatten this area as it created a ridge. After I put it all on, and cleared the fog in the booth, and shut down the fans, I went and got out of the sweat suit and mask. When I went back in for a closer inspection I noticed I had a long sag with runs on one panel and a worse one on the outside curve of the roof. I didn't worry about it as It's all correctable. I also noticed I had a lot more dust nibs than I expected, mostly in the horizontal parts of the body, and started finding more runs, some no big deal other in dificult spots to fix. I am very happy with how everything has turned out, and If I could have layed this on without the runs or all the dust nibs I'd keep it just like it is without cut and buff.
Overall after clear:
So after thinking about what I did wrong I came to two conclusions:
1 I was doing pretty good with most sections with fluid control and steady speed and overlap, shooting for 75%. Where I ran into issues was on the more tightly curved sections as I watch the paint blend in when it drops I an ending up getting the center part of the fan pattern too close to the outside radius of the curve by tying to make sure the upper section blends with the previous pass and as expected the clear gets piled too heavy and I get a run. I am not sure what happened on one of my quarter panels other than I didn't maintain 75% and maybe got a double pass on that section as none of my other quarter panels had any runs. That's really were I expected my runs to be. I paid close attention to the jams and dash as I DO NOT want to cut and buff them. I thought I nailed those but the next day I found one run in on vertical jam. Maybe I can find a small buffer to take care of that without having to do the whole jam. A more problematic correction I have was caused by the same, too close to a tight radius. After I would do the roof I would cut in and around the radiused window profiles. With slick wet coverage on the roof. I was laying on even more as I went around the profile and probably not angled in enough to get the inside edge without putting more on the roof, thus along my back window sags are running down and over the profile like drips.
2 The dust nibs got me thinking as to why. I cleaned a lot before starting, turned on fans and let them run before starting, and didn't see much in the first few coats. They all seemed to be in the 4th coat. I am thinking that they came from my suit and the hose. I cleaned the hose before I started and my suit was new, but I did not wipe the hose between coats, and I did not do anything to try to shake out the suit between coats. I think if I had done that I could have avoided a lot of the nibs that were just building up on me and the hose over the first coats before they made it in the clear.
This is the first car I have painted and I am pretty happy with it even though I had some issues of my own creation. I plan to scrape the runs down with a razor, then wet sand them out when they are almost flush with the surround surface. For dust nibs do you do the same with a razor? There are two areas I am a bit concerned about being problematic for sand through
Here in the roof run. Most of the sag/runs are above the profile line, but one run crosses it. How would you go about leveling this in the profile "valley" without sand through? glaze, then sand just till gone? if so any particular glaze? I have Icing.
and here on the back window the drips over the edge. This will be covered by the window rubber so a sand through would not be the end of the world but I don't want to break through as a paint failure there may be likely in the future. pic on next post with other runs
Pictures after base:
And here is my base sag:
I put it away for the night and the next day I cleared 4 coats. The first three went great. I did not notice much trash and didn't see any sags or runs. I did not spend much time looking though as I was spraying then mixing what was needed for the next batch then a cold drink then back in the tent. On coat 4 my inexperience began to show. I made a mistake after cutting in the trunk area and moving to the roof I forgot to check my horn position and laid one narrow stripe down the center of the roof. I couldn't stop though, so I moved on through the rest of my spray pattern with my horn position corrected. I will need to flatten this area as it created a ridge. After I put it all on, and cleared the fog in the booth, and shut down the fans, I went and got out of the sweat suit and mask. When I went back in for a closer inspection I noticed I had a long sag with runs on one panel and a worse one on the outside curve of the roof. I didn't worry about it as It's all correctable. I also noticed I had a lot more dust nibs than I expected, mostly in the horizontal parts of the body, and started finding more runs, some no big deal other in dificult spots to fix. I am very happy with how everything has turned out, and If I could have layed this on without the runs or all the dust nibs I'd keep it just like it is without cut and buff.
Overall after clear:
So after thinking about what I did wrong I came to two conclusions:
1 I was doing pretty good with most sections with fluid control and steady speed and overlap, shooting for 75%. Where I ran into issues was on the more tightly curved sections as I watch the paint blend in when it drops I an ending up getting the center part of the fan pattern too close to the outside radius of the curve by tying to make sure the upper section blends with the previous pass and as expected the clear gets piled too heavy and I get a run. I am not sure what happened on one of my quarter panels other than I didn't maintain 75% and maybe got a double pass on that section as none of my other quarter panels had any runs. That's really were I expected my runs to be. I paid close attention to the jams and dash as I DO NOT want to cut and buff them. I thought I nailed those but the next day I found one run in on vertical jam. Maybe I can find a small buffer to take care of that without having to do the whole jam. A more problematic correction I have was caused by the same, too close to a tight radius. After I would do the roof I would cut in and around the radiused window profiles. With slick wet coverage on the roof. I was laying on even more as I went around the profile and probably not angled in enough to get the inside edge without putting more on the roof, thus along my back window sags are running down and over the profile like drips.
2 The dust nibs got me thinking as to why. I cleaned a lot before starting, turned on fans and let them run before starting, and didn't see much in the first few coats. They all seemed to be in the 4th coat. I am thinking that they came from my suit and the hose. I cleaned the hose before I started and my suit was new, but I did not wipe the hose between coats, and I did not do anything to try to shake out the suit between coats. I think if I had done that I could have avoided a lot of the nibs that were just building up on me and the hose over the first coats before they made it in the clear.
This is the first car I have painted and I am pretty happy with it even though I had some issues of my own creation. I plan to scrape the runs down with a razor, then wet sand them out when they are almost flush with the surround surface. For dust nibs do you do the same with a razor? There are two areas I am a bit concerned about being problematic for sand through
Here in the roof run. Most of the sag/runs are above the profile line, but one run crosses it. How would you go about leveling this in the profile "valley" without sand through? glaze, then sand just till gone? if so any particular glaze? I have Icing.
and here on the back window the drips over the edge. This will be covered by the window rubber so a sand through would not be the end of the world but I don't want to break through as a paint failure there may be likely in the future. pic on next post with other runs
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