Painted my car on a 70 Deg, rainy day, I know stupid me, I used basecoat clear coat from Napa. painters know better then to paint a car on a rainy day ( I got in a hurry) , and I'm not a professional by any means. Well the paint is cloudy and blotchy. I know I need to repaint the car ( there's no saving it ) , can I just sand down the clear with 400 grit and repaint it? If I sand through the clear, will that hurt the repaint, or is that not a problem? And how long do I have to wait to sand car down now? Thanks for your help in advance, I know you painters will help me.

 

tell ya what I'll show you my cars paint and then you'll feel a lot better about yours!

I see what you mean in the paint but I don't have any advice for you!

 

Well it looks blue to me and that would be close enough if I painted it but I'm not a painter. But really you do not want to sand through the clear coat or much work will have to happen to straighten it out and moisture in the finish is never good down the road.... Tedd

 

i would let it set a week or 2 and then wet sand it,and buff it.what do you have to lose!evidently the base flashed off before you put down the clear if it hadn't it would have bubbled.but i will say i experienced this on the very first thing i painted back in about 82 or so well before base clear.it was a 66 chevelle hood i used a black lacquer and it turned cloudy almost to the point of being dark gray.took a buffer to it and it came right out,other then the dust in it it looked awesome.

 

I recently had a car painted by a pro that has done 3 of my cars without flaws. On the recent one, the clear did not lay down (flow) as well the others. Cut & buff took care of it.

Good luck.

 

If the metallics are blotchy you will have to respray both the base and clear. If the clear is cloudy that is likely because there was not enough airflow/ventilation during and especially after you painted it.

Humidity was likely not a factor. People paint in humid locations all the time.

I had the clear go cloudy on me when I painted a full car once as well. My exhaust fan died right when I finished. It looked great that night but the clear clouded up by morning due to lack of ventilation.

Wet sand with 800 and try again.

Good Luck.

Pat

 

looks like it was low light conditions where you painted it. stripes on the sides and deck lid look like not enough overlap on the spray pattern. just my .03. i like the blue color

 

Next time let the base sit overnight before you clear.

Did you mist coat the last coat of base to even out the metallics?

By now I'm also curious if you've redone it since it was a couple weeks ago.

 

Just today , ( like 1 hour ago ) I reshot the base coat. layed down nice. will be masking hood stripes next. maybe tomorrow will clearcoat. Not getting in a hurry this time!

 

Looks like the first job may have had a bit of tiger stripe on the deck lid or maybe its just the lighting.

 

looks go so far...someday im gonna repaint my car ! Right now its a 10+year old back yard paint job w plenty of chips scratches and assorted other defects....but it runs nice !

 

No, it had tiger stripes, and was very blotchy , I didn't have enough paint to cover car, I had bought a gallon, but , I had to paint all the jams, and inside doors, and trunk, and other small parts.

 

Maybe you can locate somebody that can do a onsite visual before your proceed. Good luck, you definitely are putting the effort into it.

 

Sand and spray, sand and spray.

Back in '98 when I was painting the '71 the metallic kept laying down blotchy so I ended up hand sanding/respraying the car 5 times in 24 hours ( I was moving out of state in a couple of days). It made a nice base layer for the painter that I convinced to come over on his lunch hour and spray the final coat.

 

when my 72 was painted I had 1 quart of color without any clear binder so it makes the color super inconsistent but covers faster. We used that as a ground coat. after that we layed to correct paint on which still took a lot to cover .With lower VOC paints some of these old colors are really really thin. It took 8 coats of color to paint my 72 with stripes and all it took 8 hours.

That's napa paint is Sherwin Williams Not horrible paint but depending on what line you bought can be really bad for coverage on come colors. Blue sucks for coverage. I sprayed 1 gallon mixed on a Harley ( bagger ) I did a few years back.

 

This was the first car I ever painted back in 2006? I sprayed the base on at a friends garage (not really a paint booth) and it didn't seam to lay evenly and he watched and stepped in a bit to spray a little. I went over the base coat in different spray patterns to get even coverage and seemed pretty even. I sprayed the clear as soon as the base flashed (20-30min). A fair amount of orange peel but had to work cutting and buffing. I was happy with the end result. The paint was the best Sherwin Williams had to offer. Cost of paint/clear was 1500.

 

Remember it's ok to sit overnight but most have 24 hour windows before clear. Smart bet is to have an extra quart or two extra from the same batch for repairs in the future. I usually keep an extra gallon for a job. Comes in handy when the paint line decides to discontinue a tint.

4 coats of wet clear should give you enough material to work depending on your flatness requirement for urethane wave. Good luck.

 

Great job with that paint project, and way to hang in there to the end ! perseverance pays
I had an old auto body man ( my next door neighbor of 6-years ) tell me many times that the reduction ratio on the paint can is a "starting-point" then reduce further from there until you get the paint to flow on and lay out. Outside temps can affect reduction ratios depending on how hot of a reducer is being used. And I agree with Brad J. about misting the final coat with maybe a little bit higher air pressure (siphon gun) if using metallic's.

 

Brad,
Would you explain "Urethane-Wave" for us, because I see the "wave" in the finishes of new autos these days.
When I was helping my buddy spray out his Bronco tub 2-months back, even after reducing beyond my buddies expectations, the finish didn't flatten out as I had hoped, and it seems to have a light 'wave' to it like light wind on smooth water.

And, I meant to ask if you prefer to "nib" the base after the prescribed wait-time, before you apply the clear top-coat ?

The good thing about suffering through our own paint jobs is we learn Bunches at a $$$$, and get bragging-rights to say we did it !
I am still helping with student loans, and could no-way pay $18k or even $10k for a paint job that will get chipped the first run-out of town.

Len

 

Len,

Urethane wave is build up of polyurethane clear. Each additional layer builds a cottage cheese thigh look. Bodyshop repairs that use 2coats won't really show it but 2 coats isn't enough material for a proper cut and buff. When you start getting into 4 or 5 coats of clear then the old school 1500 cut and wool buff look terrible. Orange peel is gone but not the flatness when you look down the side of the vehicle. Back in the day one could do a laquer or enamel job, 1500 sand, and buff and it looked pretty darn nice. Urethanes either SS or clear take ten times the work to get that glass smooth look down the side of the vehicle.

Progressive sanding starting with 600/800 grit and slowly using finer paper and then progressing to a da with 3000-5000 grits before foam buffing are used. This process can take as long as any process on a paint job. That is one of the reasons a nice paint job cost so much.

New cars don't have enough urethane to give a wave but they have a lot of orange peel in them.

 

I had to dredge up this fantastic thread because of the blue cars and my on-topic experience with monkey-hammered urethane metal flake paint jobs. Cottage cheese is definitely the texture of urethane clear coats when you lay them on that heavy, no matter what you do.

Brad knows what he is talking about here! Urethane buildup is normal and in thick applications like metal flake with many, many layers of clear, I suggest taking a month or two off work which is what I did!

I also definitely feel the pain scrappie felt with imperfect application of his expensive blue paint products!

My failure wasn't humidity, it was too much pearl, even though I thought I was being conservative.

I got mottling of my green ghost pearl on my first job and decided to wait a couple weeks and do a complete second paint job over it. $$$

3 teaspoons the first time was just too much and caused mottling.

1.5 teaspoons of green ghost pearl sprayed evenly during coats 1 and 2 (before the metal flake coats) was perfect for a massive Delta 88!

I've had to do so much painstaking sanding by now of the clearcoat that this job is just plain backbreaking.

Still, there is nothing like looking down into 8 - 12 coats of clear with 15:1 Canadian Blue to Emerald green flakes in direct sunlight.

I'm still contending with significant orange peel and pesky pinhole pitting from not being able to sand all the way down to my low spots on my first reshoot.

Per my other post about metalflake, I'm getting ready to do a 1200 grit final sanding and a second clear respray (with Spray Max 2k cans again) in hopes of removing more of the peel and the fine pitting.

It will look even more glossy, but never look very good in cloudy weather/indirect or diffused light. Metal flake paint jobs are made for direct sun first and foremost. You don't do metal flake to drive around on cloudy days.

Here it's easy to see two things: dazzling green tinted blue flake job on one side, and a hammered, wavy finish on the other side. In full sun it rocks and you only see color, but this is what shade looks like.


I hope 1200 grit and a 2nd clear reshoot will finally knock down more this hammering. The green ghost pearl works as advertised but use it very, very sparingly unless you want splotches or stripes.

It looks far better out of the shade, however glossy and wavy it may be at 20 feet.


The 10 layer metal flake clearcoat will never look very appealing in shade, but at 20 feet away the Spray Max looks glossy.