I used VW's touch up cans. When I sprayed the colour on wet, it looked near perfect match, so I was happy. The instructions say allow it to dry in 10 mins and then apply the lacqeur, which I did. After the 10 minutes, the paint had dried and looked far too dull. I sprayed the lacqeur on and this made it all shiny when it was wet, and looked more like how it should.

I've just gone to look at it about 10 minutes after putting the lacqeur on and it's dried very dull again. Does it need rubbing down once the lacqeur is dry to bring out the shine?

Or should I have rubbed down the colour before applying the lacqeur? I am rather worried

Edited 9 September, 201115 yr by CWA

Shouldn't you use more than one coat, and rub it down in between coats and slowly build them up?

Shouldn't you use more than one coat, and rub it down in between coats and slowly build them up?

nope, shouldn't rub down between each layer/coat

Does it need rubbing down once the lacqeur is dry to bring out the shine?

Or should I have rubbed down the colour before applying the lacqeur?

you should of applied about 3 coats of colour and about 3 coats of clear/lacquer

leave the lacquer to dry for a good 48 hours, wet flat with 2000 grit wet and dry and machine polish/buff

don't rub down colour coats before lacquer

Does it need rubbing down once the lacqeur is dry to bring out the shine?

Or should I have rubbed down the colour before applying the lacqeur?

you should of applied about 3 coats of colour and about 3 coats of clear/lacquer

leave the lacquer to dry for a good 48 hours, wet flat with 2000 grit wet and dry and machine polish/buff

don't rub down colour coats before lacquer

Phewww. Thanks for the info man, so it's ok for it to look rather dull at the moment? I've uploaded a picture into the first post now ^

no, its shouldn't look dull tbh so you've done something wrong whilst painting/clearcoating,

also you should never mask it up in a line and paint/clearcoat right upto the masking

no, its shouldn't look dull tbh so you've done something wrong whilst painting/clearcoating,

also you should never mask it up in a line and paint/clearcoat right upto the masking

Fuck, what could I have done wrong? If I applied too much it would have run wouldn't it.. don't know what else there is to get wrong?? This went on top of halfords primer, that won't have been a problem do you think?

Yeah good point about the masking. Rubbing compound will sort that out though, blend it in?

I've just thought, what happens if it's been sprayed from too far away?

Edited 9 September, 201115 yr by CWA

it won't be down to the primer, halfords lacquer did you use?

can possibly be down to the distance you had the can but it would still be glossier than that even if the can was really far away

Not from my own experience but on these painting dvds i have the guy says about lacquer-mat occurring if you don't mix the paint properly, same thing if you don't shake the can paints enough too. It's something about some pigments being heavier than others and the can picking up all those heavier ones from the bottom and as a result the lacquer doesn't have that shine it's meant to when it dries. So if you didn't shake the can enough maybe? Can't guarantee that's the problem though.

Also when he talks about lacquer he says put 2 or 3 coats on and than color/block sand it, then wipe down with a rag and give a simple polish after. If you want a really shiny finish with no orange peel effect then do the same thing except the simple polish but put on an extra coat or 2 of lacquer as you'll be rubbing more of it off the car when you do the final stage which is polish. For this you use a circular polisher and a 3 stage polishing compound found at paint stores and maybe halfords or that kinda place.

He was a professional painter on these dvds so i think it's pretty reliable advice

Hope this helps.

Edited 9 September, 201115 yr by joe420

I am a scammer. Avoid me at all costs.

Edited 12 September, 201115 yr by MartinB
*** Scammer Alert ***

I shaked the can pretty vigorously for at least two minutes, and it's a 150ml can so I guess the paint was mixed ok :S Couldn't be sure though. What DVD was it you watched dude? I might look into seeing if any of my mates have a copy.. as maybe it is one of the ones Beckford has watched?

As it's on a rather inconspicuous part of the car, and I had used like half of the paint I bought on it, I didn't want to rub it all off and try again. I've got other patches to do on the car so I'll just try and get it right on them ones.

In the mean time, I've just used rubbing compound on the lacqeur and gone to town on polishing it. It's now become shiny and the colours are rather well matched. I'll get a picture up in a second, the effort seems to have been regained somewhat.

The primer was halfords, and the colour and clearcoat were both from Volkswagen as a matching pair so I assume they are compatible. The instructions don't say anything else about rubbing down after though..

He was a professional painter on these dvds so i think it's pretty reliable advice (Y)

from experience, those dvds are abit shit, i've been a painter for close to 10 years and watched one of those dvds and couldn't stop laughing at some of the shit they were coming out with

Fair, you could be very right considering how cheap they were I just tried to be careful which ones i bought. He did seem to make a lot of points he claimed from experience rather than what he got taught and gave that general vibe of someone who knows what they're doing. I guess i'll find out how shite they are when i eventually try and learn to paint.

That lacquer problem does seem quite uniform over the whole area though, possibly from something going wrong before or during application that would effect the whole lacquer application? just a suggestion though. Could test it by spraying something else and not shaking the lacquer anywhere near enough and see if it looks the same when it dries?

Honestly it was just a cheap set of dvds from ebay, dunno if he's bought any from ebay before? and just to be clear i don't paint myself so i'm just passing on what i've heard.

Well if lots of polishing has it shiny at last then hopefully problem solved, just odd it came out non shiny before cause i'm pretty sure it's meant to be shiny either way :S

Edited 9 September, 201115 yr by joe420

How interesting, I just sprayed another layer of lacqeur on. This time I used Halfords stuff (I made sure to shake it for twice the recommended time).

It did the same thing, looked shiny and wet, then 'dried' after 10 minutes and was dull.

I then decided to blow hot air over it with an industrial hair dryer, and then it started going clear. Perhaps the problem is that it is going on too cold? And not drying properly, without heat? Maybe when it is FULLY dried, it will end being clear? ie in 48 hours as suggested?

I'm going to try it again on a smaller section I've just finished primering, and see what happens.

One more question for now, to what grade should the primer be sanded before applying colour? I've gone with 1200 grit as it's the finest I have.. is this right?

(I applied the primer after 600 gritting the filler)

It needs to be sprayed at about room temp or it will go dull mate, I sprayed a motor bike in my shed in winter once and it came out pure Matt finish

Shouldn't you use more than one coat, and rub it down in between coats and slowly build them up?

nope, shouldn't rub down between each layer/coat

Oh yeah by the way SCAMMER ALERT!

It needs to be sprayed at about room temp or it will go dull mate, I sprayed a motor bike in my shed in winter once and it came out pure Matt finish

Ah, this kind of makes sense! Did you manage to polish the dullness out, or did you spray it all again?

Shouldn't you use more than one coat, and rub it down in between coats and slowly build them up?

nope, shouldn't rub down between each layer/coat

Oh yeah by the way SCAMMER ALERT!

Um.. say what??!

Check out polo chat mate

And Nah just left it, might be worth getting a heater in there and blasting a couple of coats of clear on to see if it can be saved, failing that it may be a case of a quick flat with fine wet and dry and a couple of coats base followed by some laquer (just remember to get some heat in there).

Edited 9 September, 201115 yr by Mclovin

A couple of hours upto your time of painting id of left the cans in some warm water also this helps the paint and metallics seperate easier and helps prevent heavy points in the paint/lacquer. Id say your problem is your lacquer. The first coat will be dullish once flash off and coat drying time has been reached, i would say you need another two coats on there at room temp and id use a hot air gun on low wafted slowly over the entire bumper to aid flash off if room temp cant be created. You will know if it is releasing solvents as you should be gwtting a strong solvent wiff when drying. If this doesnt make sense to you or your still stuck give me a p.m.

i cant be bothered to read all the waffle so heres a quick guide to blowing in spot repairs

1. flat back an area much larger than the area you want to spray. so with the bumper pictured go about a third of the way across with p2000 used wet. this will make the area dull

2. spray 2-3 coats of colour (this should be about a 1/3 of the area you have flatted.

3. once the colour is dry, spray 5-6 coats of decent quality lacquer (rattle can lacquer needs lots of coats for it to get a good shine) fan this over to about 2/3rds of the area flatted

4. leave it alone for a week

5. blend the area using cutting compound. (you can do this by hand or qwith a random orbital machine polisher. dont use a rotary polisher it will burn rattle can paint as its not as hard as factory paint)

6. give it another week and you can wax the fresh paint. waxing sooner can trap solvents which will ruin the finish

on something like that bumper there is no need to mask anything off

Did my inconspicuous bit of wing, sprayed it all the same but heated metal a tad before spraying then brought the wing in the house while it was still wet. It's looking good, so I did the same with the bumper after roughing up the old stuff. It was looking sweet, had it propped up in my kitchen then my dad just went and knocked it over and it's got some bitching dents in it now!

Pleased that it's looking better now though, just need to try and get the blend looking better once it's dryer.

Thanks for the reply stumpy, I've got got a large bit of the plastic part of the bumper to do once more paint arrives on Tuesday, plus half the length of one sill so I'll drop you a PM around then once I've got the questions I am sure to have! And thanks Jon, that's roughly what I did, except I had filler and primer involved, think I need to flat a larger area around the damage aswell.

Only difference is that the VW paint instructions say not to give it small coats and wait a certain amount of flash-off time in between, but to cover it in 2-3 passes with colour, then wait for that to flash-off and then put the lacquer on straight after, which seems different to ways I've done it before with Halfords touch up paint. On the whole, it seems to have worked though..

I'm thinking of doing something like this, when is it necessary to use primer as you guys haven really mentioned primer application and how long should it be left to dry before applying paint? Also what's the best method of sanding the primer down to make the paint finish as good as possible? Cheers

Edited 12 September, 201115 yr by dt_

Yeah I did use primer man. Basically mine was dented as feck before, so I had to use filler. Filler doesn't stick to old paint, so I had to sand down the panel to bare metal then put the filler on. Paint won't stick to bare metal or filler, so I then had to primer it before adding the new paint.

Jon mentioned 'roughing up' the old paint surface, new paint sticks to a roughed up surface of old paint fine aswell so if you're only touching up faded paint or damage that doesn't go all the way down to the metal you can just rough up the old stuff without needing to re-primer. Basically you have to primer bare metal or filler depending on the damage.

I used Halfords primer which specified the drying time, leave for 24 hours once all coats have been added to dry properly before rubbing down for new paint. I used 1200 wet and dry and lightly rubbed it down so it was smooth. I'm not sure if this was too fine, but the paint seems to have stuck ok with a rather nice finish now that the lacquer is clear and shiny

Edited 12 September, 201115 yr by CWA

Nice one thanks a lot for clearing that up been unnecessarily priming things for ages then it seems lol. What grade of wet and dry would be best for roughing up the paint, and then flatting the paint and polishing the lacquer?

Nice one thanks a lot for clearing that up been unnecessarily priming things for ages then it seems lol. What grade of wet and dry would be best for roughing up the paint, and then flatting the paint and polishing the lacquer?

Well for roughing up the old paint Jon mentioned 2000 grit which I trust. Whatever you rough up you need to be able to polish back to normal shinniness after you are done spraying, and I've found I've been able to get away with 1200 grit doing this.

I didn't flat the new paint at all as mine is a metallic, you apply the lacquer about 10 minutes after the paint while the paint is still kind of wet so the two mix together and perform some kind of shiny pretty magicalness. Once the lacqeur is dry, I'm going to just use rubbing compound on it to bring out a shine. I think it's similar to polish but a little bit more abrasive? You can get it from Halfords in a yellow tube just larger than a toothpaste tube for a few quid, definitely recommend it. That stuff is also useful to get rid of any overspray. I've actually waited 48 hours for my lacqeur to harden so I'm going to rub it down now, I'll post up how it turned out (only if it's good though) :p