Update - Paint (Bed, Grill, Miscellaneous parts)
Well, everything is painted now except for hood and glove box door. It took me too long to build racks Saturday morning and I completely forgot it was Halloween. Only 2 racks fit in my garage so the other 2 were outside in the driveway. Yes, I sprayed half these parts outside. Well I couldn't spray paint with kids walking by, so I sprayed just a couple coats of sealer before I realized this and quit. Sunday roles around, per the recommendations from paint tech sheet I had to spray another coat before top coating it, and I barely had enough.
When I mixed what I had left it dawned on me I could add reducer to make the paint last for all the parts. Boom, just enough to do one single coat on everything. I was rushing, and wore out from a 14 hour non-stop day Saturday. First thing I did was forgot to turn the compressor on, so I ended up running out of air and by the end of the spray, tailgate and wheel tubs got bigger globs of paint I had to sand down. Next thing I noticed was when I finished, I needed to fill spray gun cleaner bottle. I go looking for it and found the reducer....
Then it hit me. Same looking containers. I used spray gun cleaner instead of reducer!! GASP.
I looked it up, and hopefully I will be ok, because it's acetone and couple other things I can't pronounce. I pray the adhesion was not affected. I said screw it and kept going. So in 6 months if my paint starts peeling, we will know why.... I am not enjoying this part of the build let me tell ya.
1st round of painting, I did the cab, and it took several spray outs to figure that out, still ended up with rough paint in places(pressure too high - 18psi). I ended up respraying the whole cab a week or two later and reduced to 16psi and slower speed.
2nd round of painting, I did the doors, front fenders, inner fenders. Reduced to 16psi, it was better, but I slowed down way too much and the metallics blotched together. Didn't know this till weeks later when I had truck out in the sun and was standing 30 feet away.
3rd round, this weekends ordeal. But, I read the tech sheet and realized they recommeded 10psi. Where I got 18 or 16psi I have no idea. But when I sprayed this paint at 10psi, with much better gun control and speed, OMG it looks badazz
So to sum up my c10 paint debacle of 2020, I have made my peace with it knowing that some day I will be respraying my whole truck again from cab forward...
I will say however, somehow, the inside of the cab turned out pretty decent in smoothness and color so I dunno how that happened but I got lucky I won't have to repaint that for any reason. But here is the kicker, I still have to spray the glove box. Let's just hope I can get that even remotely close in color.....
Obviously I would've had someone else paint this truck had I gone a different route, but thank my lucky fridge full of beer this is not a show truck
Few pics.
I had the garage completely wrapped in plastic, this pic is after a bit of cleanup but hanging all that plastic this time was a blessing for cleanup. Didn't completely wrap previous times.
This pic was today, they already have dust on them... Texas........
