Step 14 - Base Coat

Tonight was time to do the base coat. And the only time that had a time sensitive deadline. I had to get the base coat on, at least one full layer within 24 hours of the primer. So I had to start with sanding down the primer with 220 Grit wet and then 600 grit wet. There was a lot of dust and fuzz in the primer. That's causing some concern for the rest of the painting, particularly the clear coat. I'm going to have to rig up the garage differently and make it more air tight yet nicely ventilated because the clear coat is really nasty shit.

This paint is water based and only takes a 9:1 ratio of paint to reducer. I was warned about the spray going on sorta weird, like it was dry so I tried to keep my coats as thin as possible.


It wasn't easy at first to keep it thin because it was really hard to tell where the base coat was covering the primer. After the first full coat I sorta got the hang of that.

Then I had to fix the front fender. Right about the time I got to the 6th piece I noticed the gun spraying really weird, like in clumps. I messed with the gun settings but couldn't figure it out. After a few minutes I realized that the air compressor hadn't kicked on yet and it should have been. so the compressor wasn't actually on and I was depleting the tank of all the air so the pressure was dropping bad and making for a really shitty spray. Once I figured that out it was a lot better but in the process, I sprayed on a really thick section of the front fender and it was starting to buckle and crack. So I dried it and then sanded that part down again and smoothed it out with the rag and then repainted that fender again and fixed it. You can't even tell now, but it really pissed me off at the time.


All in all the base coat went on smooth. It dries really fast, within minutes of spraying it and you can dry it faster with a hair drier as well. the only thing I don't know about is how these spots are appearing on a few of the pieces. So it looks like I'm going to have to order some more black and wait a few days to get it in and do another coat. That really sucks because i'll totally miss the track day.

Im anxious to get the white started but I need to work out the black first. So the color looks great, everything is great except for those weird spots.