FINALLY: finished my paint

[elskeptico]

Thanks. The color is actually a Toyota color, code is 6U3. When the paint store pulled it up, they took out 4 chips to choose from, which were slightly different variants of metallics.

[SOLSAKS]

very nice job

it means a lot more to you knowing you did it yourself,...

and to us it looks great !

unique.

dave in NC

[Rusty76]

Really nice job. Toyota does have some pretty neat colours.

[SJTD]

Nice. I was too skeered to try metallic.

My fear was borne out when I did the dash in a dark silver. After cleaning the gun I noticed a dark stripe across the flat glove box cover. Easiest piece on the whole thing to get right.

But the rest looked ok.

[rang-a-stang]

Dang! That is shockingly good looking! VERY nice!!!

[elskeptico]

Thanks again for the compliments. It does look great from a distance, but I've found some problems that I'll need to fix (or that I want to fix).

One problem is pretty severe orange peel which is probably the result of a combination of wrong gun/pressure settings and possibly using an activator designed for slightly higher temps than we were shooting in. I can't really say, but I've begun cutting down these areas with 1000/2000/3000 (dry and wet) and will eventually buff it all the way out. I did the full process on one part of the hood and it looked great. Just need to replicate that on all my other orange peel areas. Great, more sanding

Another problem is that on one whole side the clear is totally flat and apparently didn't build enough. I know this because after wet sanding a little bit I burned right through to the primer. Disappointment for sure, but I'll just need to scuff and redo that side. I may end up throwing more coats of clear on the other areas too but that stuff aint cheap. When we got to spraying clear on that side, I tried a slightly bigger fluid tip on the gun because it was going on SO SLOW. That seemed to help speed things up, and it looked like it was going on good, but I don't think as much clear was landing on the surface as much as it was atomizing and getting whisked away by our fan. For my second attempt I'll be well rested and will take my time to get the spray right.

Again by the time we got to shooting clear coat we were exhausted and didn't take proper care. Is what it is, but I'm working through it and still really excited about how it's turning out.

[elskeptico]

Here's a little insight into my orange peel mitigation process: