Yesterday was paint day.. after countless hours of patching, welding, filler sanding, block sanding it was paint time! Single stage Acrylic enamel. So did the tack coat.. all is well! (one of the doors fell off the hooks and dented the corner, fixed that...) Did the first coat, got a sag where the "sail" panel meets the trunk, roof and side, ok... :-( I can sand that out when it dries in a few months... Start the second coat and last , noticed a thunder storm coming! Medium reducer, 20 degree drop in temp, raise in humidity... got the second coat on all is well... or so I think... do the walk around admiring my "expertise"! Then the p*** door gets this huge sag! WTF! So I razor balde ot off and spray a little of whst I had left in the gun so I can sand it down... when the paint dries (lot more sanding ahead.. aw ****). The wind is howling, and somehow the wind pushed the palstic sheet on one wall onto a few wet parts, more sanding... :-( So I go out this morning and start pulling the tape off, the paint feels soft... then I see it! That last pint of paint I put on the car didn't get the hardener! (must have been getting loopy by this time) 3hours of painting, rushing against a storm, and I didn't add the friggin hardener!!!!! TO THE LAST COAT! Drying time ? Hardness? Gloss? (it's nice and shiney right now, but pressing a finger leaves a print!) OMG! How screwed am I!?
Wait a Week or so before freaking out... It may exotherm if the lower layer was still "hot". Is it a hot summer up there in the arctic? Put it outside in the sun or heat lamp it like Earl Scheib usta do. If it was yesterday the rain wont hurt it. It just wont be "lacquer hard" and will resist, gum up, if you try to color sand it, ever. I still touch up small areas of an Enamel job on my MGB GT I painted 15 years ago with the leftover Centari without catalyst and it (eventually) dries just fine.
Exactly. You do not have to use hardner in acrylic Enamel. It will dry just fine without hardner, and will last if you keep it washed and waxed.
Or you could probably wash the un-catalyzed layer off with thinner. I wouldn't leave it on because you can never put anything over it that is catalyzed.
Listen to the doctor. Just leave it alone and check on it every couple of days. The paint below is going to gas out and along with the g***es will come a bit of the catalist. You could just get lucky and evething will turn out OK. More yime and work? Yes but you may just pull it off.
Acrylic enamal shouldn't be a problem, we use to use it all the time without catalyst as they didn't have catalyst for it back 30/40 years ago. Color sanding and buffing and recoating takes awhile, you need to wait at least a month before doing either. Single stage acrylic urathane however is a different animal, no catalyst, big problems. Are you sure you used enamal?
I hope thats a constructive comment. Hope all goes well and youre able to salvage it with some drying time.
Hey, I'd avoid any forced drying of this paint job for a few days to a good month. That means sitting in the sun, or heatlamps or heaters! Different mixtures of the acrylic with and without hardner will ''kick'' at different rates, forcing this may cause wrinkling or lifting. It will dry, jus' more slowly than you'd hoped for. In a perfect world, a complete resand and reshoot, using correctly thinned, mixed and sprayed material, under more carefully controled conditions, would be in order, but this isn't the end of the world! At the end of the day it's only a paint job, you're not married to it! S****ey Devils C.C. "Spending A Nation Into Generational Debt Is Not An Act Of Comp***ion!"
I painted a car with Centari last year with no catalyst, as I didn't want to be exposed to the hardener. I had some gun problems and it was too hot of a day and too big of a car and I got some tiger stripes. So I came on here and asked for advice and everybody said I was screwed, it would never harden, I'd have to sandblast it off, I'd have to wait a year to re-do it, etc. So I was pretty dejected and went in and talked to the guy at the paint store, and he said everybody was wrong, they used to paint that stuff all the time with no catalyst. He said sand it and put it in the sun, so my son and I sanded on it for two days and put it out in the August sun. A month later I resprayed it, again with no hardener, and it came out beautiful and dried just fine.
Wait awhile, up to a month if you have too . It will eventually get hard enough to buff. I've seen people do it before, unless you want to start over.
Five of lacquer.........two good buddies.......case of beer..........two shots of patron for each of you.......a lot of elbow grease........Hurry and get started
Ok guys! I'm willin to wait it out and see what happens.. I've got wiring to do, get the engine running again, mess around with some sort of sound "system", dub around withe the interior. I got stuff to keep me busy while I sit and watch the paint dry.... ...And hope for the best
Did I learn anything!? Yeah! I'll make sure the plastic sheeting is anchored better, that I make a deal with mother nature not to be a ***** for a few hours, that I make sure not to get distracted while mixing paint, that parts are secure and won't fall to the earth. And to come here a beg hot rodders forgiveness for minor disasters that could have been avoided with a little more care. After all there are only so many 38 P5 plymouth coupes left in the world, and I need to be a better caretaker of the one I have been given custody of...
Ever just sit and watch paint dry? No? Get used to it. Give it some time, like was said it might still kick. If not, sand it off and reshoot. It ****s, but I bet you won;t make this mistake again.
I sprayed some under hood panels with urethane black, with catalyst...sprayed some others with un-catalyzed urethane black...I forgot the catalyst in the last pot cuz I was in a hurry! It took the un-catalyzed black about four/five weeks to get solid to the touch and not sticky, but it eventually dried...it was PPG BTW... R-
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