The Great Pumpkin - '71 Duster
Success! Improvement! Relief! Per the advice of counterman extraordinaire Tony (AKA n20mstr on Moparts) at the local Albert Kemperle store I made some adjustments to the needle and fan settings on the gun which seemed to make all the difference in the world. Besides adjusting the gun, he also suggested that I increase the air pressure so I went from 30psi to 40. Not sure exactly what did it but the paint lays down 100 times better now.
Armed with this new knowledge, I sprayed the radiator support today and it came out damn near perfect. There's no noticable orange peel and really good coverage with two coats. The full coverage and gloss really makes the paint pop.
Now we're talking!
THIS is what Hemi Orange is SUPPOSED to look like.
Single stage glossy!
I do have to temper my excitement though since I still need to redo the engine bay. Now that the gun seems to be set right the hope is that the paint will cover the existing orange peel. Based on how the rad support looks I'm confident it will be OK. I did buy another quart of paint though in case I need to redo any major areas. Depending on how the engine bay turns out perhaps the trunk will be next. That's a lot of re-masking though, not sure I want to do it over again.
Spent a good amount of time fixing runs this afternoon. I used a Meguiar's Sanding block to knock the globs down then wet sanded with 2,000 grit to feather the edges and surrounding areas. Some of the drips were really thick and took a lot of sanding to blend them into the surrounding area.
Here is a major drip on the firewall after a little work with the stone. You need to have a light touch and make sure you don't dig into the surrounding paint. It can be tricky in some instances and sometimes there's no way around it. However, you can file down the sanding stone into whatever contour you need. I didn't do that but I can certainly see how it could help.
This one was pretty bad, it was like a waterfall that pooled at the bottom. The stone and wet sanding took care of it though.
The runs most likely happened because of "positioning", meaning I sprayed too long in one spot, overlapped the spray too much or was too close/too far from the panel. The orange peel could have been the pressure or possibly the mixture not being right. So many things seem factor into a paint job, just have to keep doing it I guess.
I'm also realizing that the underside, wheel wells and engine bay are probably the hardest areas to paint because there are so many uneven surfaces. Additionally, the protrusions and varying depths create imperfect lighting situations so it can be hard to see exactly whats happening. Happy that I managed to see improvement on the radiator support though.
Planning to re-do the engine bay tomorrow. More to come.
Success! Improvement! Relief! Per the advice of counterman extraordinaire Tony (AKA n20mstr on Moparts) at the local Albert Kemperle store I made some adjustments to the needle and fan settings on the gun which seemed to make all the difference in the world. Besides adjusting the gun, he also suggested that I increase the air pressure so I went from 30psi to 40. Not sure exactly what did it but the paint lays down 100 times better now.
Armed with this new knowledge, I sprayed the radiator support today and it came out damn near perfect. There's no noticable orange peel and really good coverage with two coats. The full coverage and gloss really makes the paint pop.
Now we're talking!
THIS is what Hemi Orange is SUPPOSED to look like.
Single stage glossy!
I do have to temper my excitement though since I still need to redo the engine bay. Now that the gun seems to be set right the hope is that the paint will cover the existing orange peel. Based on how the rad support looks I'm confident it will be OK. I did buy another quart of paint though in case I need to redo any major areas. Depending on how the engine bay turns out perhaps the trunk will be next. That's a lot of re-masking though, not sure I want to do it over again.
Spent a good amount of time fixing runs this afternoon. I used a Meguiar's Sanding block to knock the globs down then wet sanded with 2,000 grit to feather the edges and surrounding areas. Some of the drips were really thick and took a lot of sanding to blend them into the surrounding area.
Here is a major drip on the firewall after a little work with the stone. You need to have a light touch and make sure you don't dig into the surrounding paint. It can be tricky in some instances and sometimes there's no way around it. However, you can file down the sanding stone into whatever contour you need. I didn't do that but I can certainly see how it could help.
This one was pretty bad, it was like a waterfall that pooled at the bottom. The stone and wet sanding took care of it though.
The runs most likely happened because of "positioning", meaning I sprayed too long in one spot, overlapped the spray too much or was too close/too far from the panel. The orange peel could have been the pressure or possibly the mixture not being right. So many things seem factor into a paint job, just have to keep doing it I guess.
I'm also realizing that the underside, wheel wells and engine bay are probably the hardest areas to paint because there are so many uneven surfaces. Additionally, the protrusions and varying depths create imperfect lighting situations so it can be hard to see exactly whats happening. Happy that I managed to see improvement on the radiator support though.
Planning to re-do the engine bay tomorrow. More to come.
