The CF Hood Saga (continued):
Last night I spent 8 hours with my hood (it's like I'm visiting it in the hospital, which is quite appropriate considering how gimped it was). Last night was the FOURTH time it was fully painted. When I got there around 8 work on sanding down the old primer had started. three coats of primer were applied, and then it was baked for a little and wetsanded. I've never seen such detailed wetsanding. He even had me go over it with my hand for a second opinion to see if I could find any rough spots that he had missed. The hood was so amazingly smooth it was just crazy. He had completely eliminated the slight ripple texture that the CF hood had. We went down into the mixing room and made up a quart of sunlight silver using the really precise PPG computer system for measurement and mixing. The painter adjusted the mix oh so slightly to get it to be as close as possible to the color of my car. I think he had to make it a tiny bit lighter. It's fun though, Sunlight silver is like 157 parts of some silver color, then 1.7 of a black and 1.5 of a white-ish. Add some thinner and bam sunlight silver
So he went at it, hit it with 2 coats of base, tacked and did all that fun stuff. I went up, saw the hood baking, and was absolutely amazed. It was finally perfect. I went down into the shop to take the hood off my car (I have some pics from this on my computer back at the house) and slap it in the hatch. I go back up to the paint booth as he is releasing the door, coming out shaking his head. :'(
He said "I just can't believe it. It was going so well and then the paint just came right up". I went in the booth, and sure enough it had. 95% of the hood was perfect. There was just the area right near the front edge of the hood on the ridge that starts near the driver's side headlight... the paint got all screwed up there. Not even screwed up like someone would see the imperfections if they got up really close to it (that was Monday's paint job, paint job #3 for me with the hood, #4 in it's lifetime)... we're talking like from 20 feet away someone would saw "oh wow what's wrong with that hood". :'(
We took the hood out of the paint booth and he went back to block sanding it again, though he vowed never to paint the hood again himself. It was 4am and he said he was going to just finish block sanding it and leave it for the top paint guy at his dad's body shop (where he works during the day and does freelance stuff at night) to do tomorrow. I'm picking the hood up today at 05:30PM when I get off from work, hopefully with it on my car and not battered and in the trunk :'(
Wish me luck.
Oh and I've decided. If the Mazda2 doesn't come to the states, this will be my next car.
http://www.globalsuzuki.com/swift/index.html I think they are AWESOME looking, though not a Mazda. I love my P5 a lot (as you all know in this thread haha) but it's bigger than what I need and I'd love to downside to something Mazda2/Swift/mini size.
What do you guys think of the swift (specifically the 3-door sport variant)?
its the latest craze! also im sorry to hear about the hood, for some reason i knew i shouldnt have got it even though it was a good price if that happened here the price total for all that would would have been like 2 new hoods!
as you can see I sorta had my hands full.
