Oh the ups and downs ...
This is definitely an up and a down. I got color on the firewall last night. I hadn't sprayed automotive paint in close to 20 years, let alone a metallic. But that's not the down. The paint came out gorgeous. The problem, some scratches are showing through (the down). I saw 3 scratched when I was spraying the color. I thought, I can live with those. They aren't too bad. I didn't notice all the other scratches until I'm into the clearcoat. So I just sprayed 2 coats of clear and wrapped up. Serves as a good preview of what it will look like at least. The scratches are only on the vertical surfaces too, and only in one direction even though I cross hatched 400 wet then 600 wet. These scratches almost look like 320 scratches. They are very hard to see in a photo, so not even going to try, but because of the metallic, they show right up in the sun.
So re-work it is. Bummer for sure, but it happens. Hopefully I can just stick to the vertical surfaces (sand down to the color, then wet sand the color with 600 until the scratches go away, spray more color then re-clear).
Here's some photos for fun though:
This is where it all started. To clean up this mess:
The after
Passenger side angle shot
Driver side angle shot
You can really see how wrinkly the firewall is from the factory and why many custom shops just chop the whole firewall off and start fresh. I wasn't about to go there.
