Mini progess

Douglas had a good day today.

Getting to this point has been something of a "learning curve". 

Applying the primer didn't go smoothly - in both senses.

We had borrowed an air compressor & dug out my old spray gun. Douglas spent many hours preparing the body, and the plan was to give it one final sand & spray it the same day so that it didn't get chance to go rusty. 

The paint had been bought quite some time ago in anticipation of this moment, and neither of us realised that the modern two-pack paints' hardener goes 'off' quite quickly if it's not in it's original sealed container.

So a mad dash to the local body shop was required to get more. 

Part way through applying the first coat the power kept tripping, and then the compressor made a big, rather worrying sparking, and stopped completely. We had a partially painted car and paint mixed. We managed to borrow another compressor, and Douglas persevered, despite it looking like there were fine particles in the paint. He had to get paint on the car though.

Once dry, it was obvious that there was something amiss. Very fine black particles all over the car. The whole car needed sanding down again. 

It transpired that at some point the compressor had lunched the plastic cooling fan and ingested into the tank the plastic dust.

We sanded the car down again, and managed to make one good compressor out of two. We also bought a couple of in-line filters for the air-line. 

By the time we had done all this, the hardener had gone off again. More was ordered. We mixed the remaining primer, and Douglas applied another coat. It went on quite well, though the compressor struggled to keep up with the airflow demand. 

A short break later Douglas went back out to apply the third coat, to discover the paint hard in the gun. The gun was wrecked, and we broke it beyond repair attempting to clean it out.

After some internet research I bought a new, gravity feed gun, which was on sale. It was pretty cheap, and I was a bit unsure about it because it was so cheap. Today was the 'proof of the pudding ' and the cheap spray gun proved to be a very good buy. 

The paint went on beautifully. Three coats applied today, in nice warm, dry conditions. 

The new spraygun has been thoroughly cleaned and there's paint left for another coat if required after inspection later this week.