Shooting Color on the Firewall
Here are the tools of the trade, Quart of Dupont Centari mixed to match.
Reducer, Hardener, and a touch up gun. Before painting, make sure the surface
is perfectly clean, and free of grease. I use lacquer thinner on a clean rag to
do this.
At first I had some trouble getting the paint flowing
correctly. I was using 30 PSI, which was recommended in the spray gun manual.
I should have used 40-50 PSI as recommended by the Paint can. Metallic paint is
really hard to work with. You can see some runs if you look closely. These won't
show once the car is back together.
The finished product didn't look that bad, but still
far from what I'd want to see on the exterior of the car. A little orange peel
won't hurt under the hood, but on a hood, it wouldn't be good.
Another one of those pictures which is worth 1000
words. This is the most painting I would attempt. It looks OK here but up close,
you can tell I don't know what I'm doing. In general, leave paint to the professionals,
but if you must, don't start where it shows.
Centari shrinks as it dries. This shows off all the
little imperfections in the paint much better than primer. Still looks pretty
good though.
Now I've got all the masking material off. As soon
as it gets dry I'm ready to start putting it back together.
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Author: Bill McKenna
email bill@mckennasgarage.com