One of the things I have tried to do while building this project is to tell everyone of my experiences , good and bad. My newest experience is getting the V8vair ready for paint. Since I have never painted a car before, there is a lot to learn. First was equipment. While I have a 160 gallon tank on my compressor, it makes so much moisture that even a couple of water separators could not give me what I wanted so I did some investigation. I bought a turbine unit from TP Tools. Stand alone compressor and matched triple guns. Really a very nice HLVP system. The only control on the compressor is the off / on switch........yeah, blew my mind as well !!!! The next decision was my paint choice. Since I have no experience with anything other than rattle cans, I went with what was supposed to be the easiest stuff to paint.......Lacquer !!!! Since I can buy Dupli Color Paint Shop lacquer paint . I can buy it at just about every Autozone and Advanced Auto Parts so it seemed like the right way to go.
Since I had not painted anything before, I decided to paint my daily driver, a 99 Mazda Miata. There was only minimal body work and it had been red before so I choose Performance red lacquer. It took several coats of primer and red before I finally figured out the guns and the paint. It turns out the Turbine system , while totally moisture free, has a heater built into the output. The air from the hose going into the gun is 103 degrees. Without a bunch of thinning, it hit the car almost completely dry. I finally figured out that the " Already mixed " paint ( 50 /50 ) had to be thinned a bunch. In the end, I mixed the paint 50/50 with acetone. It allowed the paint time to flow out and become smooth. It also cut down on the orange peel I had been experiencing . This picture show the current level of my painting skills.
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