Thank you. I've never been after a show car finish, I'm no pro painter. But the problems I've had with the paint wouldn't even have given me an 'acceptable' finish. It just looked awful. I'll post up pictures of it all when I'm done.

I have decided to go back to normal isocyanate-containing 2k (as per Mario's suggestion). The reason I've been perservering with the other hardener is because of the safety issue. However, I just cannot get it to work. The problem is the paint won't dry. Even after 6 weeks i still put a deep scratch in it with a finger nail. So whenever I spray onto it, the solvents partially dissolve the coat below. Weird though as it only happens when I spray the primer onto the top coat. Spraying colour onto the primer makes no odds, and neither does spraying colour onto colour. Even the iso-2k doesn't react with the non-iso-2k. So currently I have the car wheeled out onto the drive atm in an effort to 'bake' the paint and get it to dry. However, I'm missing the 'bake' atm. So much for summer.

So really I'm not further foward (in fact I'm back) than I was 2/3 weeks ago. It took me 5 hours to rub the paint from the boot lid yesterday Even if I wanted to pay someone to finish the job now I'm not sure it would be a decent job as there's so many different coats of paint on it, some likely to react, that it really needs to go back to bare metal. Any way, back to the garage. In an effort to make myself feel like I'm getting somewhere, I'm going to paint some panels today.

Stick at it mate, I'd have given up a long time ago with this painting malarkey so you're doing well! Be worth it in the end also to be able to say "I did that"

:)

I'm not sure I'll want to claim responsibility for it the way it's going

I'm sure itl look top when its done mate. keep it up.

It'll be reet in the end. Even some professional bodyshop work ain't all that once you start looking.

Thanks guys, internet fwends are nice.

I've worked in a body shop for a few weeks and I'm aware of the short cuts that can be taken. It's just time atm. Though I'll have a full week after this one. I still need to have the engine and box out to sort the huge leak

I have to admit defeat on this one. There is only so long you can waste time undoing your own work before it becomes futile. And sadly, that time has come for me. I have tried everything to try getting this paint to go on right, but to no avail. I've gone back to normal 2k, no luck, I've sprayed at high pressure, low pressure, 10% thinner, 20% thinner, light coats, heavy coats, dust coats, coating with thinners after and I still can't prevent this solvent pop issue I have. I will no longer have the garage after this week so nowhere large enough to spray a car. So I am having to admit I have no idea how to paint! I'm going to prime the whole car, panels etc ready for paint and in the meantime go on the hunt for a bodyshop prepared to spray a pre-prep'd car. Hopefully i can find one.

After the constant battle over the last 3 years I am begining to wonder whether

a) this car is cursed

b) I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to an automotive based hobby

And i just bought a house that needs a load of work. Get ready for updates relating to a lot of rubble and the roof caved in

Fuck Sticks

Gutted for you man =(

dont give up on her! not allowed!

I haven't given up on the car, only on me spraying it.

Unlucky Si I feel mine is cursed a lot of the time too :( but once it's done it's done that's how I see it

Keep up all the hard work mate

si, compton accident repairs in long compton might be worth a try. A mate of mine also knows a guy in bloxham who is supposed to be pretty reasonable and good quality. I could get his no if you want.

Edited 28 May, 201313 yr by g40jon

Yes please Jon, if I could get his number that would be great thanks

Any progress Si?

Yep, all painted up. Some panels have bubbled and others not due to primer contamination. Terrible orange peel in places as well because I was worried about runs and paint reacting, I didn't put it on too thick. It's salvageable, and at least half the panels are a really good finish (for an amateur). Been a long road and I'm currently renovating my house, so this has taken a bit of a back seat. I plan to put her back together this weekend. Whole winter ahead of wet'n'drying though to get her shiny

Gold star to the person that can spot the 3 differences (from standard)

Factory style stone chip

I'll be honest and say the photos make it look better than it is. The bonnet looks dull in the photos because of awful orange peel. It started to bubble and react so I eased off loading it on. I thought it was reacting due to having too much paint on (solvent pop) but actually, I'm now convinced my primer-mix was contaminated with something, probably in the thinners as all the panels I painted with brand new thinners didn't bubble. Anyhow, the hardest part is done. One of the doors is awful, as is the bonnet so I'll probably look at spraying them again next year (if ever) or get hold of a spare and do it as and when. One wing is suspect but possibly salvageable.

Edited 24 August, 201312 yr by prankstar2003

Looks lovely simon!

mate that looks fantastic!

Doesn't look too bad at all mate - hard to tell from pictures obviously, but it's nice to see it back together! Looks a lot better than when I last saw it around a year ago anyway! :)

Thanks man. I was pretty pissed at first when it wasn't perfect, but as I've seen it more, and had a fiddle with smoothing the worst out, I'm feeling better. I'm just glad it's done now, no more endless weekend sanding, filling, priming, taking it all back off and restarting.

And for some WIP pictures. I have massive respect now for what a hard job spraying is. The truth certainly is that: all the work is in the prep. I'd spend 5 hours prepping a single panel at times, and when I've had such an up and down road as this, I spent more time rectifying problems that making progress.

So after a few days I had something that looked like this, right at the beginning of April (I started this whole saga on Easter weekend). Lots of coarse W&D later and the panels and shell were ready to take some primer. I was going well after about a week.

You can see here that I even have a few panels in primer, I was on for my two week deadline. For those of you who remember, I originally started with a Isocyanate-free hardener. They use this stuff in aerosols and other products, but it has the consistency of treacle, so makes the paint really thick, meaning thinning of at least 50% (where normal Iso paint is thinned 10%). This still wasn't enough and the primed finish was extremely rough, usually meaning I'd have to W&D at 320 and 500 before putting colour on, a lot of work and bloody messy too.

]

A further problem was previous repairs causing 'pickling' of the paint. I'm still not 100% sure of what caused this on mine, but I think it was the use of synthetic paint for an earlier repair. It had either decomposed badly over time, or never matched the original colour as it was purple and very powdery. Either way it caused this on panels and on small places on the car. Once I had narrowed down exactly which paint caused it (this car had had many repairs, and in fact a huge area around the petrol filler was just skimmed with filler. I'm guessing an accident at some point) I just rubbed it off with W&D, going back to bare metal in lots of places. However, before I worked out which paint was causing the cracking, I used something called 'bar coat' which acts as a sealer and barrier to paint going on top. You can imagine now why things took so long, being as I'd prep, prime then have to rub back the pickled areas, bar coat and then re-prime. This happened on about half the panels in one form or another.

There were a few rust holes in around the windscreen too that I sorted with Kurust, and then fibre glassed over. They're not on show so this should be an ok fix.

Once this was sorted, and I'd got all the panels in I wheeled the main shell in and masked her up, first of all applying stone chip, and then bar coating this (I found the primer caused pickling of the stone chip. I now think this was due to the aforementioned contaminated thinners). I tried pretty hard to recreate the original areas where stone chip had been applied, think I nailed it and it should help to provide protection in the future. I also did this treatment on the bottom of the front wings and front valance too.

So I masked the rest of the car up ready for primer (remember, Iso-free hardener, that's an important detail!)

And then primed

Again, the finish was really rough, so I had to go around the whole car with 320 and 500 W&D. May look easy, few flat panels and arches. You have to get into every ridge and furrow to get the rough texture out, so this took hours, and of course I'd end up rubbing through and having to re-prime small areas. Guess what happened when I did that with aerosol primer? Yep, the paint reacted and bubbled (contaminated thinners?).

So this is where I get pissed off and stop taking pictures, but the story (for anyone interested goes as follows).

I spray the whole shell in the blue colour (£200 worth!) using the non-iso hardener. Well of course it all goes to shit. The paint goes on so thickly, that it's like a finish you'd have on your wall at home, like it was done with a roller. Where it wasn't so bad, I got major bubbling (as before). So now I have a car that looks awful, and needs stripping back. So I go to re-prime the car, and this happens all over. Turns out the primer on top of the undried paint was reactivating it

So I start sanding the car down to go back to the original paint and I find I can wipe the paint off (After a week!) with 2k thinners, something was preventing the paint hardening. Even baking it in the sun did no favours. So off came all the paint, primer and all and I have to start over again.

In the meantime, I had a go at spraying some panels and predictably they bubble too. They all they taken back to primer, and re-primed (with what I now suspect as contaminated thinners!). I tried bar-coating to act as a barrier on some paints, but this happened

This sort of carry on goes on for weeks until I eventually give in and talk to a body shop. My research into solvent pop at the time said it was most likely down to poor technique (not contaminated paint) so I do deal to prime the car and then take it to a body shop to put the colour on. I took a panel up to them to see if the prep was up to standard and they blasted on some colour (all my materials) and it bubbled on them. They sprayed this panel a few times until they came to the conclusion of contaminated thinners. I left the panel with them for about 3 weeks, but they were so busy they never got round to getting the whole car up, so with time running out, I decided to do it all myself. Which, as the pictures above show, I just about managed.

It's a long story, with many non-exciting twists and turns, mostly about poor choices I made. The shell alone was primed 3 times, and some panels have seen more coats of paint than I have sunsets. However, I ended up going back to using all isocynate 2k (possibly dangerous I know) and had no problems at all. I'm convinced it was the thinners as panels primed in new thinners haven't bubbled, whilst others I primed in 'old' thinners. Somewhere along the line, they became contaminated I believe, causing a reaction with later coats.

Edited 24 August, 201312 yr by prankstar2003

Some crazy hard work gone in!

Well done!

A few weeks ago I said never again, but providing I could get space, I'd have another crack at a different car. Do things a little different however

paint mine if you like!

Gold star to the person that can spot the 3 differences (from standard)

I'm going for - de-rub stripped, painted arch spats/bananas and smoothed wing repeaters.

good to meet you today si - hang in there with the fucker. by spring time next year the paint hassles will be a fading memory.

easy now

mack

Good to meet you too.

1 point for arch spats, but rub strips and repeaters are standard