Ok, I've finally had some time to start finishing everything off. First up is the race boot. I've decided to thin the Brightside out more than I have in the past (I'm thinning it with mineral spirits) and I'm really happy with the results.

For the first time for ages, I didn't get any roller marks in the paint.




The reflections from the boot are really good. This shot shows some of the neighbour's trees.




Thinning the paint more than usual (plus wet sanding the living hell out of everything before I started painting) reduces the orange peel considerably. The next shot shows just how little orange peel there is now, (look how easy it is to see what brand my new camera is). Please remember that this picture was taken about 10 mins after painting. It hasn't been polished or anything.





I'm planning on sanding the whole car tomorrow (400 - 600 - 800 - 1200) and depending on the weather I will hopefully be able to paint it the day after. I'm finally getting close to finishing this thing off once and for all.



I just had to include this pic
I bought a tripod along with the new camera, so of course I had to take some more pics of the boot once it got dark. The area around the lights shows the usual dust/crap/etc that gets on the fresh paint. I can't wait to see what this will look like once it has been wet sanded and polished properly. As one of my students mentioned to me the other day "I'm bringin sexy back".....

 

wow ... that is really stunning quality. I am 100% convinced now

So I am thinking do a first coat with 5:1 paint to thinner, then go 4:1 for a second coat, then wetsand and do a thin coat of 3:1 and polish it up. That about what you have done now?

 

Time for another update.

First of all I've discovered something wonderful about wet sanding, 240 grit wet and dry sandpaper!!!! This stuff absolutley tears through orange peel and gives a nice flat surface in no time at all. And the best part is that if you sand carefully, it will give a finish that's good enough to paint straight over.

I don't know how many hours of sanding the 240 has saved me/will save me but it's pretty colse to being the best $1.60 that I've ever spent.

Anyways, onto the painting. I've prepped my hardtop, the 'road' boot and the rear spoiler (not the same ones as I've posted about above) and today I painted the hardtop and the spoiler. The front of the spolier came out perfectly but the back has some runs in the paint that I didn't notice until it was too late.

I am also pretty happy with how the hardtop turned out...



I've also discovered that it's a lot more effective to take the pictures with some background light and no flash.



There is still a bit more orange peel in the paint than I would ideally like but once it has recieved its final sanding and a good polish......

 

Sweet.

I did a $0 paint job over the weekend. Decided to screw around and finally fill the holes where my front emblem was. Figured I got nothing to lose since my bumper is shot to heck already.

Whipped out the sandpaper, bondo, and touch up paint bottle...

It doesn't even match at all. Plus I need more interim grits than just 300 to 1500 because one leaves scratches the other can't remove. C'est la vie. At least it's black! Eventually I'll just get a new cover to replace my busted one, but for now.... it'll do. Photos when I get the scratches out.

Matt

 

Time for another Aussie update.

I spent two days sanding down all of my other painting efforts on the car and prepped it for it's final paint (yeah I know, I've said that before....)

In an effort to constantly improve the results I made a big change to my painting. Previously I had thinned the paint with mineral spirits, but for this coat I thinned the paint with something called Penetrol (and I know that it's not a real thinner). I'll let the results speak for themselves.





I can't believe how those big white marks got on the paint...




And lastly a subtle one




I get bored pretty easliy, so instead of watching paint dry I started the final wet sand and polishing of the hard top that I posted about last time. Here is a little teaser as how my polishing is going so far



And that was after two passes of Poorboy's SSR3 (cutting compound) with a cutting pad. I'm not at the actual polishing stage yet. I'll post some pics of the hard top once I'm finished polishing it.

 

so thin the paint more, watch out for runs in the paint, and work out the
orange peel with wetordry 240 grit.
Any chance you could show a pic of the roller? I've been looking at several ones, i still think the paint could be thinned 50/50 for a final coat...

 

holy ****. nice.

 

Hmmm Looks like Uncle Arthur has Gray Hair and plays with a Miata. That's two of us so far

 

Car is looking great, about 6% of my hair is gray.

 

More Pics, Lol...

 

yes please. This thread kicks ***.

 

Aussie, can we get a summary on what your currently doing for painting if you are starting from scratch to final product??? It seems you keep changing your techique with respect to how your painting and sanding!

Thank you

 

hmm, a Write-up for the budget painter, specifically for the
miater drivers!!! Yes!!!

 

Painting Guide from Start to End

Prep Work
The extent or level of preperation needed to successfully re-paint a car depends on the condition of the original paint. Most of the paint on my car was really faded but the paint was in pretty good condition other than the nose cone. For the nosecone (specially if it has a lot of stone chips in it) I would use 240 grit wet and dry sandpaper, and for the rest of the car I would probably use 600 grit wet and dry sandpaper.

The sanding technique that I use for all of my prep work is to start with a wet panel and gently sand in a small circle (about the size of a CD/DVD). When I sand, I listen and feel more than I look. The sandpaper sounds 'raspy' when it moves over uneven paint and the sound dies away as the paint gets smoother/flatter. I then feel the paint and if it feels totally smooth then I'll move on to the next area. If it still feels bumpy then I keep sanding.

When I sand I use two buckets of water with dishwashing liquid added (about the same amount as what you would use to do the dishes). The first bucket is for the sanding blocks and sandpaper and the second bucket is for a clean rag to either add more soapy water for sanding or for wiping down the next area. I also use a watering can to wash down the areas that I have sanded to clean them from all of the sanding debris. I just use the water and wipe the sanded areas with my hand to clean them.

Painting
I prefer to use the Brightside paint so the rest of this guide will be based around my experiences with the Brightside.

Paint Thinning
I add about 400ml of paint to one of the big measuring jars that I pinched from the kitchen (No honey I don't know where that thing has gone. Are you sure that you didn't lend it to your mother??) and then I add 100ml of Penetrol to the paint. Now it gets a little artsy. I use a zhan paint viscosity measuring cup and I dip it into the penetrol/paint mixture and time how long it takes for the paint to run out of the cup. I then add mineral spirits to the mixture (and shake the hell out of it to mix it) until I get a time of 20-30 seconds for the cup to empty.

Paint application
The most important part of the paint application is to make really really sure that the surface that you're about to paint is as clean as possible. I use a wet chamois and wipe the paint down with it at least two or three times before I paint.

When I roll the paint I use two rollers. One is a painting roller, the other is the 'smoothing roller'. I use a small roller paint tray, I load up the roller with as much paint as possible and then push most of the paint back out onto the tray. When I roll the paint I use the smallest amount of force possible and I don't try to do it too quickly.

I roll one panel and then I use the smoothing roller to very very gently go over the fresh paint to removde the bubbles. Because I try not to use any pressure it sometimes takes a little while for the bubbles to go but they always come out in the end.

Between Coats
I try to paint in the morning and then let the paint dry for the rest of the day. I will usually only try to wetsand between coats after leaving the paint to dry for about 36 hours.

I wetsand between every coat of paint but I try to sand with the highest grit paper that I can get away with. If gthe paint is really smooth with hardly any orange peel in it then I will try 1200 or even 1500. If an area of the paint is really rough then I have used paper as low as 240 grit.

When I wetsand between the layers I try to get the paint totally flat and I try to be really careful not to leave any scratches in the paint that could show up through the next layer.

After the Last Coat
I define my last coat of paint as the one after the coat that gives me total coverage. Last year I had two coats total, including my final coat. Then I stuffed up my final wet sanding and re-painted the car again. Then my car was hit by a FWD and I ended up doing three more coats on the whole car to makesure that the accident repairs were properly covered. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that stuff happens and what you think may be your final coat may not be after all.....

In all honesty this is the area that has caused me the most grief. I want a perfect finish after completing the final wet sanding/polishing. And pretty much everything that I have tried has left me with problems. To me a problem is any mark in the paint what-so-ever. I have found that the final wet sanding is scratching the paint and then I have to cut it back so much with my polisher that I end up cutting straight through the top coat of the paint....

So I have changed my final wet sanding to a claying. If you are into detailing you will already know the benefits of using clay to clean paint. And it does a great job of getting the crap off the top coat of the paint.

After I clay the paint I then get out the heavy polishing artillery and use a cutting compound with a cutting pad on either my random orbital polisher or (if I have way to much orange peel) I'll use the rotary polisher. I do a little bit of detailing on the side, and when I detail I like to use the Poorboy's range of products along with Wolfgang buffing pads. Very basically I tend to use SSR3 - yellow cutting pad, SSR2.5 - orange pad, SSR1 - white pad, Poorboy's Professional Polish - grey pad and EX-P (synthetic sealant) and Natty's Blue (wax) - blue pad. I usually do 2 passes with each product/pad combo but when I was trying to cut out the scratches that I mentioned previously, I have done as many as 5/6 passes with the SSR3.

I also like to wait for the paint to stop 'smelling' until I give it a proper polish and I don't seal or wax the paint for about 1 month.

 

ask and ye shall receive...
can i have a sequential HKS BOV now? lol, j/k

Thanks for the write up Aussie

 

it sucks everyone seems to be sticking to the "normal" colors with brightside...

 

Ok i just bought 3 quarts of black brightside paint so that I can finally after 8 months fix up the body damage I inflicted last summer on my black, stock, 97. Headlight lids from B1m2x3s messed up car are on the way and I will be buying an aftermarket replacement fender. Will be nice to see the car looking fresh again .

Oh an ya I know its just an ordinary paint color, but i want to retain the original color, im considering doing the dark red on the race car with black A pillars and a hardtop would be nice, but i just cannot justify buying one at current market price :(

 

get a quart of red paint and a quart of white... mix them together and paint your car with that, lol...

 

so you are a fan of pink miatas?

 

wow so nice .. !