Nurdyguy

I'm rebuilding my engine (see 'Rebuilding my '65 for details) and have been painting the engine bay while I can. I cleaned it pretty thoroughly and put down a couple of coats of the POR-15 rust blocker which came out pretty good.



Then I put on a coat of the POR-15 top coat in chassis black.



The issue is that the top coat came out with a rough texture, about the same as 300 grit sandpaper. I have no prior experience with this paint and can't seem to find anything online about it. Is this normal or did I mess something up?

I kind of ruined my first spray gun because I did one of the undercoat sprays at night not relizing that I didn't have a good place to clean the sprayer (I just use my hose in the back yard but it was dark so I couldn't see how clean I was getting it. I bought a new sprayer for the top coat, maybe the setting was messed up? This is really my first time painting this way so any info is appreciated.

Gun Jam

The top coat was probably applied well after flash time and before cure time. So basically the paint below had not cured and the solvents in the fresh paint attempted to re wet the partly cured paint below and it wrinkled.

You might see directions like apply 2nd coat within 5min or after 1 week.

Nurdyguy

Interesting, thanks for the info Gun. I had waited about a week between each coat, doing them on my Saturdays. I just emailed POR to see if I could get more info about the flash and dry times.

Gun Jam

I would think a week would be sufficient...Im curious about what they say

Nurdyguy

One thing I didn't think about at the time but is probably relevant... My prior usage of my compressor, I didn't empty the tank when I was done (I almost always empty it when I shut it off, must have just forgotten...) I gave it a quick test spray before I poured the paint into the feeder and felt some wetness so I sprayed it a bit and it seemed ok. In retrospect there may have been some condensation in the tank that caused the issue. It was also somewhat cool that day which probably didn't help.

I ran some 400 grit over a small spot yesterday and it seemed to smooth out fairly quickly so hopefully this won't end up taking too much work to fix.