Brice/Todd - Looks much better than that 3 shades of purple. I even got snubbed by ricers who had their cars still in primer with their pimpy body kits... That's bad...
Ryan - Yeah lots of wet sand work. Hood is not complete. Messed it up the 1st time and had to do again. I'm going slower this time.
Jonathan - Yes there are several articles out there on it. That is one of them. I got the idea from the guy on the Mopar forum who painted his General Lee look alike with orange Rustoleum. He figured out how to do it up good.
Carl - At first I got all hung up on the roller strokes showing up. That was nothing.
Here is what I did.
Wet sand that purple with 150 grit. Wash and dry. Spray Rustoleum primer on it. Out in the driveway. I'm not making my garage a paint booth. That's why the roller test.
Thin Rustoleum with Miner Spirits by about 30%. Apply a coat, let dry. Wipe down with mineral spirits. Apply second coat. After this wet sand with 400 grit (1st mistake). Now repeat the 2 coat process only 40% mineral spirits and wet sand with 600 grit (2nd mistake). Repeat again and wet sand with 800 grit. Then a light top coat with 50/50 mix. Wet sand with 1000 grit. Wash. Then 1500 grit. Wash. Then 2000 grit.
So after all this you would think it would look pretty good. Yeah well I have no clue how to wet sand smoothly with 400-800 grit paper. This paint is really soft and mars easily. I waited 24 hours before wet sanding. Didn't seem to matter. So by now after all sanding the surface is smooth in most places. Little orange peel. Some roller marks. Scratches are showing through from previous layers. So I get out the Porter Cable polisher with a 3M wool pad and some medium cut polish. Yep that's the ticket. No orange peel and no roller marks. Surface is as smooth as a baby's behind. Now you can really see where I messed up in the previous layers. Oh joy!
Yeah so at this point I step back 10 feet and the car doesn't look so bad. 20 feet pretty darned good. Close enough. Put a final light polish on it and call it a day. It still needs more polishing and then some wax. Even with that it is 10x better than before. I actually heard the poor little guy crying one night about it's paint job. So I had to do something. It was the humane thing to do.
