Not Fast, just "Less Slow"

Going with the theme of it's too late in the year to drive it, I painted the engine compartment. Starts out greasy and rusty, then cleaned, then sanded, then primed, top-coated.

Went to the local Eastwood store and bought Black Epoxy Primer with activator and Urethane single stage with activator in Boulevard Black.

The primer coat turned out great but then I ruined it by attempting the finish coat. Instructions say you can top coat over the primer within 5 days so that's what I did. I bought a cheap dual halogen work light from Harbor Freight the day I primed and it worked OK for what it was.

I took a day off from work on an unseasonably warm day mid-week. I went in the other room to mix the paint and came back to shoot the shiny stuff...guess what? One of the halogen bulbs had burned out already. DOH!!! Nothing like spraying black paint over black primer in a black engine bay in the dark corner of the garage. I had used a full size siphon spray gun for the primer but it seemed to be overkill, hissing and shooting air everywhere so I switched to a touch-up gun. It's a small cup so I had to refill several times. Some of it went on dry so I was re-shooting as I went along. I thought it was going pretty well overall but then I ran out of activator and ended up with some dry areas. Bought some more activator and re-shot some areas a few days later.

Well, shooting black paint in a cave is not the best situation so I ended up wet sanding the rough areas with 400/600/800 grit cause that's what I had. Then I had to buff. I had a low RPM electric buffer that got to most of the open areas but I still had nooks and crannies I was doing by hand. well that sucked so I went up to Auto Zone and bought a Mini Powerball just like Foose uses. O:) So between that and more elbow grease it looks OK. I won't say it took a whole weekend but.....it pretty much did.

Now the engine bay looks better than the outside of the car, so it's just my style.