Two paint problems on top of the front fenders… First, I managed to drop something and leave a large chip on top of the fender. Applied some touch up paint with a small brush which stuck up. When I tried to sand it down I managed to sand through some of the adjacent paint into the white sealcoat/primer. You can always make a problem worse…
Second, on the opposite side of the car I managed to sand and polish through the paint into the white sealcoat/primer.
I mixed up some black paint, loaded it into my “spot” gun, and tried to touch up the areas. I ended up with poor control and thick paint on both sides. After sanding the new black paint I covered it with three coats of clear coat.
The clear coat looked terrible – I clearly didn’t have the paint gun set properly, and it was difficult to control over the small areas. This is why the recommendation is to clear coat an entire panel.
Still, with nothing to lose I went ahead and started sanding the newly clear coated areas with 1500 grit sandpaper. This leveled out the lumpy clear coat, so I followed up with 2000, 3000, and 5000 grit sandpaper and then the fast cut polishing compound. The good news is that the clear coat blended well – you can’t tell where I did the new clear coat.
Unfortunately I still have problems with the underlying black paint. It is lumpy where I touched up the paint chip and there is some white showing through on the other side.
After contemplating the situation for a while I decided that I needed finer control than I’m getting with the spot paint gun.
I ordered an air brush which should provide very fine control over paint. When it arrives I will sand down the bad areas and repeat the process. Hopefully the air brush will give me the results I’m looking for.
Stay tuned; it looks like there will be an update three at some point.