Woke up at 7:30 AM this morning. Took my fully sanded cleaned up (the given name by this board) "Budda Civic" to my friends garage a few miles down the road.
Note: I never painted a test piece cuz i dont have a spare fender, trunk, door, metal piece, or a beer fridge to test on, Sad but true. Probably the main reason i didnt test on an object is cuz i'm dirt poor and dont wanna waste any ahahaha, and that i couldnt find anything: P
As of right now i have the first coat done completely on the car. And yes, i have run into 1 Big problem: BUBBLES! FREAKIN EVERYWHERE. LOL very tiny ones though i puff and they are gone. Other than that the paint; I got a tint of Metropolital which is liek charcoal/gray black. Very nice color, is really nice and smooth.
Now, I have a question. I have 4 cans of this paint. Only used about half for the first coat. I Opened every can and each one has bubbles in them. I Mix and i Mix and mix but they dont seem to wanna go away. THinning it with mineral spirits is just making them smaller but more of them. I know i have the right paint, but mad bubbles. I forgot to take my digital camera to his house, but i will be going tonight again for the second coat and will snap some pics of the paint and the car.
I HOPE IT TURNS OUT GOOD :P Wish me Luck. Will post pics tonight.
Hehe, I hope you realize it wasn't meant to burst your...bubble (sorry). Actually, I think you already HAVE the perfect test piece! Let's be honest here, even if it only comes out looking like a quickie, cheapo paint job, it'll STILL look better than before! No?
Okay, so you've jumped in with both feet. Time to learn how to swim... fast! If you really would like to have it come out nice, concentrate on just one piece, the hood for example, or a fender, it doesn't really matter which. Don't worry about the rest for now, that's the beauty of this method, you don't HAVE to paint the entire car at once. If you can't hold off doing the whole car, take a break after the second coat. A serious break, cuz now is the time to make a big decision. After your done, and the paint is fully dry - give it a full day. Step back and really look at what you've done. You'll probably have, as 69Charger so eliquently described, a "WTF am I doing!" moment. That will pass. Once it has, take a closer look. You say you were having lots of bubbles, but when you gave em a good puff, they would disappear, right? My experience with this is that's okay. Not ideal, but manageable. the important thing is to get all those bubbles to pop BEFORE the paint gets "tacky". If not, forget about trying to re-roller it, you'll just pull up paint and it'll look worse. that's where concentrating on one panel at a time comes to your advantage, if you go too fast, and come back to correct mistakes after the paint is already starting to dry, you'll have a mess on your hands.
So, back to the break. Here's the big decision - how does it look now, and how good do you want the final finish to look? If you see mistakes; bubbles, runs, sagging, etc., NOW is the time to sand them out smooth, BEFORE you go any further. If you don't do it now, and decide after two more coats that it isn't smooth enough, it just means your going to need to do twice as much sanding to get it right. Take the time after the first two coats, you'll be thankful you did. If you end up completely removing the paint to get rid of the errors, better two coats than four. And don't be surprised if you do, cuz if you're mixing it right, the first two coats are gonna be thin. That's the whole idea. the fridge was originally white, and I painted it Sunrise Red. I felt that it wasn't really until after the 5th coat that I could really tell that the base color was completely covered. It may not take as many with the dark paint, only you can tell.
As for the bubbles in the paint can, did you have them tinit it for you, or was that a "stock" color? If they tinted it for you, did they use a shaker to mix it up? If so, you may have to let the paint sit for a few days, maybe even a week. I took 69Charger's advice and mixed each "batch" well; slow, steady "stirring", for nearly 20 minutes. As he said, once you think you've stirred it enough, stir it some more.
My experience was that you're better off OVER diluting with mineral spirits, rather than UNDER diluting (I did both). If you over dilute, the paint will have a greater tendency to run on you (nearly all my surfaces were vertical), but if you just keep gently rolling it, it will eventually set nicely. Don't over roll it, just enough so that it no longer wants to run on you. I actually found that with my over diluted batch, if I rollered horizontally, across the grain if you will, it helped stop the running quickly. The alternative of under-diluting creates much more serious problems; the paint will get "tacky" before it gets a chance to spread and lay down properly. If you try to correct this by re-rollering it will lift the paint and look like a mess. If you let it go as is (too thick) you'll get orange peel. Not a total bust, but it will just mean more sanding for you.
I'll stop here cuz I've already talked too much. Anyone else want to chime in with some words of advice or encouragement?
Nothing ventured, nothing gained - that's my attitude. Forget all the nay-sayers out there, they're a dime a dozen. ADVENTURE, my boy! The joy is in the journey, not the destination.
If you really would like to have it come out nice, concentrate on just one piece, the hood for example, or a fender, it doesn't really matter which. Don't worry about the rest for now, that's the beauty of this method, you don't HAVE to paint the entire car at once. If you can't hold off doing the whole car, take a break after the second coat. A serious break, cuz now is the time to make a big decision. After your done, and the paint is fully dry - give it a full day. Step back and really look at what you've done. You'll probably have, as 69Charger so eliquently described, a "WTF am I doing!" moment. That will pass. Once it has, take a closer look. You say you were having lots of bubbles, but when you gave em a good puff, they would disappear, right? My experience with this is that's okay. Not ideal, but manageable. the important thing is to get all those bubbles to pop BEFORE the paint gets "tacky". If not, forget about trying to re-roller it, you'll just pull up paint and it'll look worse. that's where concentrating on one panel at a time comes to your advantage, if you go too fast, and come back to correct mistakes after the paint is already starting to dry, you'll have a mess on your hands.
