im in the process of wet sanding my car. im wet sanding the primer with 400grit and its alittle messy as you guys would know. what is the best way to clean the surface of left over wet paint dust etc...??? just rince a hose over the car? wipe it down with something? and if that what kind of rag or towel.... jsut looking for some pointers guys thanks also do you guys think i can get away with 65-70degrees? for base paint and clear?

For cleaning, use a sponge and water, then squeegee with a california water blade or similar, then wipe down with lint free cloth, then wipe it down totally a few times with solvent on lint free cloths/towels.

I'd say you'll probably be ok with 65-70 degrees, if you get the right temp. range reducer and hardiner/activator. We painted mine outside in those sorts of temperatures with some weird humidity swings and it came out great!

Good luck, and take your time, it'll be worth it in the end!!

-Paul

thx for the info, how did you paint it outside? didn't get anytihng in the paint or clear?

Well, we painted the car under a canopy, but I won't lie, a few bugs did decide to land in the clear before it had dried. With the exception of a very few, they all came out when we wet-sanded the car after the clear dried. Actually I'm really amazed with how well the car came out being painted outside, but we didn't have a booth, so we made do with what we had Here are a few pics of the canopy, etc:






And of course the wet-sanding afterwards



Finished product (not completely buffed though!)


We spent a whole week on the car...only about 5 hours of which was spraying color/clear...that includes the time to clean up after the spraying. It's all about the prep, take your time with that, get everything straight and properly prepped and you will be very happy with the results!

-Paul

That's ingenuity! If the bugs are small- as in knats or fruit flies, you could pick them out with a razor balde, then fill the gouge back with some clear. But the car looks great. Nice color.........

Haha thanks, yeah, it worked out pretty well all things considered. There isn't too much worry about bugs landing in the color because it dries VERY fast. We didn't get anything in the color, but the clear dries slow (mine was 16 hour dry time) and it's VERY sticky so the bugs got stuck in the clear LOL. We used an xacto knife to (carefully!) pick out the ones we could, then wet sanded the rest of them out. With a few exceptions it worked out great!

And thanks for the compliment, I like the color a lot

-Paul

Here's a question for you: did you use activator, or hardener in the clearcoat? I use Martin Senour paints, ( napa) and the clear coat "feels" dry in about 10 to 15 minutes.....I used to use enanmel paints that took along time to dry.....that greatly increased my bug count..... now I don't get any unless they land while I'm painting.

The clearcoat I used is PPG DCU 2002. It is a high end clear designed to provide a great shine. It's high solids and (from what I'm told) the slower a clearcoat dries the deeper the shine you get. The DCU 2002 uses a hardener AND uses reducer (seemed odd to me and my friend, who's painted many cars). There were virtually no bugs in the main body of the car. The hood is where we picked up the most bugs because it's a big flat surface.

When I painted my engine bay and door jams I used a VERY fast clear that could be wet-sanded within a couple hours of being sprayed. It was great to work with, but when you compare the quality of the finish on my strut tower to the finish on the top of my fender it's quite obvious that the slower drying clear really makes for a MUCH nicer finish. If I had it to do again I might not use the slow clear, but man, it laid down like glass and the nice thing was that the few sags we got virtually flattened themselves out since it dried so slowly. All they needed were a few passes with some 1000->1500 grit sandpaper and they were gone! If I had an indoor place to paint I'd definitely use the DCU 2002 again, but even outdoors it really wasn't too bad.

-Paul

P.S. I'm quite sure the EPA frowns very heavily on painting our cars outdoors, but I won't tell if you don't

I used to paint my cars inside a BARN! I can't tell you all the junk that fell in my paint jobs........now I have a nice one bay paint room with a 16 inch fan that dims the lights when it kicks on..........so now I paint inside, and the fan blows it all outside..........I just added a fresh air full mask to my setup......it's a little claustrophobic when you first put it on.........but man you can stand right over a can of paint and you smell NOTHING!! Even my eyes are covered............which is nice.......I've had paint splash in my eyes before and it's about like lemon juice..........anyway, maybe you can rent a paint booth next time.........or take a college class in painting and use their booth.......could you imagine how nice you caould paint in a real shop? Pat