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Bugeye garage paint job - start to finish [almost] with lessons along the way

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Nice work, Fred. Congrats! I did all the body work and blocking and priming on my Big Healey but chickened out shooting the metallic Healey Blue as a first timer. Lots of work, but you get a real sense of satisfaction doing it. I found this forum to be really helpful for any questions I had along the way: https://www.autobodystore.com/forum/
 
Looks great Fred. I like the color. I painted mine BRG and being my 3rd car that color I am tired of it. Prepping my TR6 for paint now and it will be green but it will have metal flake in it.
I have the same gun as Trevor, the Concours HVLP from Eastwood. I have not had any problem with orange peel and give a lot of credit to the gun. But that may change. I was using urethane from Eastwood and this time I will be using paint from Summit. Had ordered from Eastwood but after a long wait I cancelled and went to Summit.
 
Good discussion and lots of helpful advice.
I am finding that on close inspection, with light falling just the right way, I can still see "pigtails" or curly-q's from the DA. Hand sanding would likely be better in this regard, as I'm finding these difficult to buff out. Maybe it's my cheap sandpaper, maybe it's my technique, maybe it is expected when color sanding with a DA. However, it took me hours with the sander to get the paint flat. I can't imagine how long it would take by hand.

I ordered some 3M Trizact 3000 grit sanding discs and I'll wet sand using that to see if that does better on the pigtails. I may try to polish with the "Meguiars twins", ie. M105 followed by M205. Some say my 3M perfect it system is for use on a rotary polisher, while I used a DA polisher. I'll let you know how that goes.


Also, when I remounted the doors I am having trouble getting proper fit. I am thinking the patch panels I put on the A pillar area in front of the doors changed the size/shape of this area slightly. I may be thankful for the ability to blend the single stage paint!
 
I spent almost 10 hours color sanding my midget. Duct tape on you finger tips will keep them from bleeding. ;)
 
I tried the Megiars 105. No better than the 3M perfect it rubbing compound. I guess the issue is that the pigtail scratches from the DA are fairly deep and just require a lot of elbow grease to get out regardless of product. I'll hold off until my Trizact 3000 grit disc arrives and see if doing a wet sand with that prior to more compounding is a quicker way to get to perfection!

I think it's funny how much time we spend on these old cars. My wife looked at the paint job and thinks it looks great, and thinks I'm crazy to keep working it. I guess the average person just looks at the car from a few feet away and sees a nice clean shiny paint job. They don't get down at an angle to a fluorescent light and search for small scratches to spend hours trying to get out! Maybe a therapist could help me...
 
TulsaFred said:
I think it's funny how much time we spend on these old cars. My wife looked at the paint job and thinks it looks great, and thinks I'm crazy to keep working it. I guess the average person just looks at the car from a few feet away and sees a nice clean shiny paint job. They don't get down at an angle to a fluorescent light and search for small scratches to spend hours trying to get out! Maybe a therapist could help me...
Click to expand...

Great job TulasFred. I did my own paint job (rented a booth) and my wife also thinks it looks great. There is orange peel, but compared to a new Nissan 370Z I saw, not too bad, in fact the Nissan may even have more. So I decided that if I try to colour sand I would probably make it worse.

I did find some of the original paint and was amazed how good it was, dead flat, not bad for a cheap car made in 1960.

Dave
 
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