Hi All, new forum member here. Just a hobbyist, and been using the SPI epoxies and other products on my project for about 18 months now and finally got to the point of throwing color on it after years of rust repair and metal work. Made a mistake that is essentially going to require me to sand off all my base and start over and I want to make sure I don’t make a similar mistake.
Took the week off work to make sure i had plenty of time. Got my doors, fenders, and other bolt on parts sealed, based, and cleared early in the week- all turned out great. Then moving on to the main body:
The surface going into the process is a combination of well cured SPI epoxy and 2K primer (sanded through primer to epoxy, 2K left in the low spots). Everything was sanded to 400 grit - shooting a solid color so no need to go further.
Anyways i started out with a reduced coat of epoxy for sealer, about a 30% reduction (1:1:~0.7). Sprayed that out in one wet coat and let it sit for between 2-3 hours. Then started base. I’m shooting shopline base (only thing I could get my paint code in) and activating with SPI universal activator. I sprayed 3 fairly wet coats with about 45 minutes flash between coats. I noticed on the 3rd coat some very fine wrinkling/crazing so that’s when I called it quits. After talking with a few people over the last couple days the first line of action was to let it sit overnight and sand out the wrinkles back flat and then shoot a couple light coats of base to see if it would take it. It did not- started wrinkling almost immediately after sanding with 1000 grit. It seems that i probably made 2 mistakes: I did not wait long enough after spraying epoxy to start base and the base solvents soaked into the epoxy? Second is I may have sprayed base a little to heavy. or it’s a combination of the two.
Anyways, given this is a restoration type project for me that I want to last a long time I’m going to sand off all the base and start over since it seems the problem is with the sealer or first coat of base. So here is the plan once I get to spraying again if you guys can confirm my approach makes sense
1)day 1: spray reduced coat of epoxy as a sealer (25-30%). I’ll probably spray around 7or 8pm. I’ll then wait overnight
2) day 2: spray activated base on unsanded sealer around the same time in the evening (~23-24 hours later). Most likely 3-4 coats with 30 minute flash times
3) wait overnight and spray clear 24 hours later the following evening.
I’m out of time on the time I took off work so this will have to be an evening and early morning type project now. I’m willing to adjust accordingly. I’ve attached a photo of the type of wrinkling that I’m dealing with. It seems to occur in areas and sections of panels that I would naturally have a tendency to lay it on a little heavy or have an overlapping coat- this is what is making me believe that the problem is with the sealer timeframe.
Took the week off work to make sure i had plenty of time. Got my doors, fenders, and other bolt on parts sealed, based, and cleared early in the week- all turned out great. Then moving on to the main body:
The surface going into the process is a combination of well cured SPI epoxy and 2K primer (sanded through primer to epoxy, 2K left in the low spots). Everything was sanded to 400 grit - shooting a solid color so no need to go further.
Anyways i started out with a reduced coat of epoxy for sealer, about a 30% reduction (1:1:~0.7). Sprayed that out in one wet coat and let it sit for between 2-3 hours. Then started base. I’m shooting shopline base (only thing I could get my paint code in) and activating with SPI universal activator. I sprayed 3 fairly wet coats with about 45 minutes flash between coats. I noticed on the 3rd coat some very fine wrinkling/crazing so that’s when I called it quits. After talking with a few people over the last couple days the first line of action was to let it sit overnight and sand out the wrinkles back flat and then shoot a couple light coats of base to see if it would take it. It did not- started wrinkling almost immediately after sanding with 1000 grit. It seems that i probably made 2 mistakes: I did not wait long enough after spraying epoxy to start base and the base solvents soaked into the epoxy? Second is I may have sprayed base a little to heavy. or it’s a combination of the two.
Anyways, given this is a restoration type project for me that I want to last a long time I’m going to sand off all the base and start over since it seems the problem is with the sealer or first coat of base. So here is the plan once I get to spraying again if you guys can confirm my approach makes sense
1)day 1: spray reduced coat of epoxy as a sealer (25-30%). I’ll probably spray around 7or 8pm. I’ll then wait overnight
2) day 2: spray activated base on unsanded sealer around the same time in the evening (~23-24 hours later). Most likely 3-4 coats with 30 minute flash times
3) wait overnight and spray clear 24 hours later the following evening.
I’m out of time on the time I took off work so this will have to be an evening and early morning type project now. I’m willing to adjust accordingly. I’ve attached a photo of the type of wrinkling that I’m dealing with. It seems to occur in areas and sections of panels that I would naturally have a tendency to lay it on a little heavy or have an overlapping coat- this is what is making me believe that the problem is with the sealer timeframe.