Perfect Paint Job Engine Bay or Not???

P

PUNISHER VETTE

I'm about to apply my 2nd coat of clear.

I'm wondering from those who may have done it or just general opinion what you would do in my situation.

Since it's just an engine bay I was planning on just 3 coats of clear then calling it good. No 600sand and 2 more coats like a custom exterior job would call for.

And no sanding/cutting/buffing due to the difficultly factor of the firewall nooks and crannies.


But if you were doing a custom engine bay would you wetsand with 600 and apply more coats of clear?


Would you somehow sand/cut/buff? I'm almost positive I won't but what can I do within reason to make this engine bay look awesome?

I'm happy. It's a dark gray so very subtle looking till it gets in the sunlight I think. Not much blotchyness for my 2nd time every painting a metallic and so far the clear is going on well... some orange but I expect that almost for me.

Sorry...my little camera doesn't have a stabilizer and I've had a LOT of Pepsi Max today lol.



 
If you can shoot clear pretty nice and not have a bunch if dust spots in clear then leave it, I would only sand out the dust spots and polish, and not 1000-5000 just sand 2000-2500 and polish, its not really going to get sun so you wont ever see minor scratches. Just my thoughts
 
I've always just put 2 coats on engine bays.

My opinion no need for more. It will never see the sun.

And doing a flow coat in an engine compartment is a total waste of time that could be spent elsewhere.

As for color sanding. Hit the big flat areas I'd needed
 
Thanks guys! that's about what I figured. big areas that will be seen the most I might hit with a little cut/buff/polish but I'm not sure yet.

And I mixed up just enough paint for about 3 coats so I think I'll just leave it at that. I'm not going to worry about 600sand+2 more coats... that would take me time I'm not sure is worth spending on this section.

there is some clear coat orange peel but terrible and no dust I see so far. No more orange peel than what my '14 Sierra has on it... wish I had bought something different as now every time I look at it all I see is the orange peel from the robot painter.
 
Well here it is out in the cloudy sky. The color really is hard to get good shots of as depending on the angle or position it's completely different shades of gray.

I'm still on the fence what to do next. I only have 2 coats of clear on it so don't really want to be sanding/hand buffing/hand polishing if that's even possible... But it does have some orange peel that I'm sure won't ever be fixed unless some sanding is done.





 
Thanks guys!

I think you are all probably right. No point in wasting a TON of my time on areas that either won't be seen hardly ever OR will be getting covered up with brackets and wires most likely. If anything, once all things are covered up and I still feel the need to polish what's left exposed then I can do those areas I guess.
 
I think it looks great. Once you fill that engine bay up, you wont even notice most of it anyways.

My only piece of advice would be next time paint the engine bay after your exterior priming is done. It will save on the headaches of masking the painted areas off and dealing with overspray later.
 
mitch_04;41977 said:
Looks good, don't mess it up! :)
Click to expand...

LOL, don't be me, I'm famous for not leaving well enough along and screwing it up. Looks great!
 
Thanks for the complements guys. Decided to just start putting it back together and pretty quickly had a terrible failure.



Must have been brittle fiberglass and it didn't like the air hammer on the rivet...
Now I have to figure out if I can repair it good enough for it to be unnoticed.
 
I did the same thing. Got the engine bay looking really good without painting the exterior. I thought I masked and covered up that well but.... When I got done painting the exterior the primer/base/clear fogs EVERYWHERE and I basically am going to need to scuff, base coat and re-clear to get a nice shine under the hood. I would wait until you have the exterior done before you look for perfection under the hood. Just what I took away from my first paint job last month....
Jim
 
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