Paint question.

[Lynn]

Any paint guru’s out there? I am strictly an amateur. I have painted lots of laquer over the years, always with excellent results. This is my first experience with urethane. I am painting an old Suzuki motorcycle. Using PPG products, candy apple red over gold metallic with clear coat.

Following the manufacturer’s directions, I painted some practice areas on a metal panel just to make sure I had the routine down. Had no problems. Even had an extra decal to lay on top of the color before putting on the clear. Worked flawlessly.

Painted the plastic side panels with the epoxy primer. Let it cure a week (yeah, I know, overkill), then wet sanded, washed thoroughly, and dried. Blew then off and ran a new tack cloth over them.

Sprayed the first base, gold flake. Came out perfect. Let that dry overnight, gently blew them off to insure no dust settled overnight. Sprayed the red. Took about 5 coats to get the color I wanted. Red looked perfect. No fish eye, no runs, etc. Let that set up for a few hours. Directions say you must clear coat within 24 hours, or else you will have to “scuff” the red before clear coating. Directions say you can clear coat in as little as 20 minutes, but I wanted to wait longer than that since I had put so much color on.

After about 3 hours, shot the clear. Because the color was so fresh, I didn’t clean or prep it in any way, just as I had not cleaned and prepped between the gold flake and the red. Directions call for two wet coats, so I shot it wet. Waited 12 minutes between the two coats. At first, I thought it was going to be perfect, but then noticed a bunch of very small indentations. Maybe 1/32 of an inch to 1/16 of an inch. Almost looks like a bit of fish eye, but not quite the same as what it would look like in laquer. I only dealt with fisheye once time shooting a car with laquer, and solved it by simply wiping the affected area down with a clean, rag damp with laquer thinner. Shot right back over it, and it came out fine. Well, I wasn’t about to do that with the urethane clear, so I just let it dry. Have wet sanded trying to get down to the indentations, but can still see them slightly. I am afraid if I shoot over this again, the same spots will still not “take” the clear, and the indentations will be worse.

I really don’t think it is a contamination problem, as I shot the clear with the same gun (Sharpe HPLV) as I did the color. My compressor is oil free, and I have two water separators in line to my spray hose, as well as a two stage regulator system. I just cleaned out everything the day before. if it were a contamination problem, I would have expected it to surface with one of the color coats. Of course, I could be wrong.

I really don’t want to sand these things all the way back down and start over. If they were metal, I could see it, but plastic....

Two questions. 1. Anyone know what caused this?

2. Can I fix this?
I was thinking I could mix up a very small batch of clear per the directions (4 parts clear, one part reducer, one part activator), then using a match stick, or other very small applicator, fill in each of the little indentations by hand, let it dry and wet sand the piece until it is uniformly smooth? Then clear coat over it?

Thanks for any help.