Another busy evening working on R2, but not a lot to show for it. Started off with prepping some stuff for painting tomorrow.

Remember about a month ago I’d posted pictures of my skins all done. Well I decided that I wasn’t happy with the result. The problem was the paint’s thin in places and felt rough to the touch. It could have been what I’ve dubbed ‘dusty paint’, or maybe it was simply that the paint thinned/settled while drying and the aluminum was coming through. What I mean by ‘dusty paint’ is that sometimes I find that the Satin Rustoleum sprays out almost like a fine powder or dust with very little solvent and dries rough. It looks okay from a distance, but to the touch it’s not good and picks up marks really easy. I’d agonized for almost month if I was going to repaint. I knew I need to, but kept on telling myself it wasn’t that bad.

I lightly sanded down the problem areas and then had to re-mask all the bits I didn’t want paint on. Luckily I hadn’t removed all the mask-tape on the back skin.

I’m going to start tomorrow with a fresh can of paint and hopefully I’ll not have the ‘dusty paint’ problem or worse the dread orange peal.

The bad news is the weather is cold, well cold for Northern California. Its 45-50 overnight and not gets much over 60 during the day. The Rusoleum primer is good from 50 degrees, but I’m not sure how well the Satin White will dry overnight. The good news is the forecast is rain which means the temperature should be a little higher due to cloud coverage 🙂

I also tried to get the skirt ready tonight for the top coat as well. Finally finished up the Bondo work

The problem with Bondo, or for me at least, is that I end up putting on way to much while trying to fill the gaps, resulting in a lot of cleanup – and I’m tired of sanding the inside corners of all those strips, so I think it’s as good as it’s going to get for now.

I applied a coat of primer, sanded a little more followed by a final coat of primer (until I see what it looks like in the morning)

I also need to remember to hit the underside of the frame with primer/satin white too.

Lesson learned today – Don’t rush to remove masking tape until you’re 110% sure you’re happy with the finish.

I started painting some more parts last week, including the feet, ankles and boxes. I also stripped down the drive system and decided to give it the once over too.

Base coat was just Rustolum gray primer. Plan is to do at least two coats of undercoat followed by 3 coats of the Rustolum Satin white.

Here’s the inner drive system supports all finished. I’m sure they’ll get all scratched up in no time, but I wanted to protect them the best I could.

I also masked off some parts today ready for more priming tomorrow. I used the latex rubber trick to get into those hard to tape spots.

I used a combination of a small pointed file and Q-tip to remove any excess latex. It came off pretty easy. What seem to work was to wait a few minutes for it to start to set, and then just pick at it with the file and the latex would just peel away at the edge. For larger blob on the surface I just used the Q-tip.

It works so well I decided to use it on some others parts that I could have just used tape on, like the shoulder recesses, but thought it quicker to use the latex instead. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow if I over did it.

Here’s the recess where under shoulder detail goes right before I painted in the latex on the sides.

With a bit of luck I’ll get to painting things white in a day or so.

More photos in the gallery.