Spraying base coat over fresh clear coat

[jarretts70]

Hi all. New member here (longtime SPI user....) looking for some advice.

I've got a paint job to do that involves several colors in a large stripe pattern. I've done multi color jobs before, but they have always been pretty simple and I've been able to get all the colors down then clear coat the entire vehicle.

This one is different. It's a pretty big vehicle (GMC Jimmy), and the stripes are large & complicated, plus the owner wants to approve the pattern before it's sprayed. Long story short, I know I'm not going to get all the basecoat finished within the window to spray the clear. So my plan is to spray the body color & a couple coats of clear. Then when we're ready I'll wet sand with 600, layout and paint the stripes, and re-clear the entire truck. The whole process could take 2-3 weeks. - note this my hobby, not my job. Evenings & weekends...

What I don't know is if I need to worry about spraying the extra layers of basecoat for the stripes over the clear. I had an issue once where I base coated & cleared a truck boxside and managed to put a pretty bad run in the clear. Tried to wet sand it out but in the process I broke thru to the basecoat & down to the primer. So I sprayed a little more basecoat over the spot (which was not much bigger than a quarter), thinking I could touch that up the blend in more clear. Mistake- it blistered badly & I had to do a more involved repair to make it right (lost money on that one...). In that case I believe the issue was I sanded thru the clear and the new basecoat reacted with the existing. I don't want to run the risk of that happening on the GMC!

Thoughts? Thanks

 

[Jim C]

ok no clear coat should be involved in your process until your done all your stripes or artwork with the base coat. if it takes 2 weeks to do all the stripes then thats fine. just clear it. there is no real recoat window for base coat as its not activated or a cross linked product so it has very little chemical resistance. recoat windows for base are mostly all bs and written for production bodyshops. there is no way i could do any of my paintjobs in the 24 hour window that the paint companies say you have. many jobs have taken weeks to do. when its all done i just clear it. never in 20+ years have i had clear peel from base. if the base sits for weeks like you think it will then add 10% slow reducer to the clear. it will help it bite into the base.