A change of colour

With the mini in the new work shop I have been back there twice now and ended up racking quite a few hours. Only if the jobs would happen at the speed I have in my head!! I never try to guesstimate  optimistically and always add on extra time per job, but not really having done something quite on this scale it is no surprise I have over run each time I have been there by a good few hours. I was expecting to take up a fair bit of space in the work shop but oh my word I really did amnage to spread out.

To date I have finished sanding and cleaning all the panels, moved all the frames to hang panels up, masked off (I really couldn't believe how long that took, wasn't expecting a five minute job but went well over an hour that I hoped for), sprayed the colour on and not a single drop of paint left in the tins! Then today I had to buy more clear coat, do a bit of sanding on the bonnet after the air line I joined with fittings decide to separate which gave a mighty woosh. Gave me a bit of a jump and looks like it through a load of shite onto the bonnet.  R/H side sanded back, there is a few water droplets on the left but the rest is what it looks like, bad. Oh, brilliant idea was to borrow our kids water pistol to apply water when doing the wet and dry :)

With a bit of added panel prep done and panels all cleaned I got on with the clear coat again. Have to say I am not enjoying my spray gun and if I do this again I'll get another one that is gravity fed and with a bigger needle. The 1.2mm needle and gun is not giving a very wide fan or as much out of it as I would like, so the speed I passed the panel each time was surprisingly slow and really did take a bit of self control to slow down. The orange peel was impossible to shake on the bigger panels, fine on small areas but that's why the extra layer of clear went on today to give me room to polish it back a bit harder and hopefully get it all up to standard, fingers crossed.

So that should be it for a few days now. I do need to look at the garage and see if the opening can be made bigger for more clearance on the wheel arches for it's return. The racks in there need unloading and shifting to allow space for the tool chest to go in, yes I plan to actually be able to find spanners, novel idea! May be a compression test on the engine as well, we will see, spent quite a bit of time away from the family the last few days so trying to be good and spend at least some time with them.