clear over enamel paint??

[pa69broncoguy]

getting ready to paint my bronco and wondering what the best way is to clear enamel paint. I tested the compatibility on my door pannels and they looked good last night but today they have lost their shine and have a leather type texture with a light shine. i put on 2 coats enamel, waited about 45 minuted and put on 2 coats of clear. Would i be better to wait a couple days before clearing so the enamel will harden up?? any ideas??

 

[tobinj]

Try polishing what you have down already clear wise, typically some wet sanding is involved and some polish to get things really shiny. As far as waiting I'm not sure every paint is different and requires different flash times. The leather type texture could maybe be orange peel which is common if you have the gun too close in most cases, I'm no paint expert and I only paint my stuff for fun so take all this with a grain of salt its just things I've done over the years to make a paint job look better.

 

[allenfahey]

The leather texture is where the clear reacted chemically to the enamel and "shrunk" the enamel. You can't buff it out, you need to remove the clear and re paint. What type of clear did you use? Did you use urethane clear? Even if it didn't react to the enamel and looked great it will likely peel later. There is enamel clear but it will still be dull compared to a good urethane clear. You can't get the same results of a base coat/clear coat system with enamel.
If you want a new car look get bc/cc.

 

[Rustytruck]

in the old days you had to use a complete system from the same manufacturer to achieve what you wanted to do. You sprayed acrylic enamel with a hardener in it and sprayed 2 coats and imediately switched to the clear coat and added some of your color to the clear to slightly tint it. just enough to notice it wasnt truly clear and sprayed a coat with that. and then came back and sprayed another coat of non tinted clear over the first coat of clear. This was all catalyized stuff smelly and very hazardious to the brain cells.
this all had to be done as a continious operation and you cant let the solid color set up before shooting the clear. The problem with enamels is they dont really dry, they sluff off solvent and plasticiser for a very long time like years. if the layers of paint are seperate the solvents blowing off the color coat will lift the clear coat. Compatability between the clear and solid color was a big issue. Any mistakes and your stripping paint and starting over. In its day buying these paints was like buying the highest costs paints of today and risking stripping it all off.

 

[pa69broncoguy]

wow, this sounds like it is a complicated issue, thanks for all the info guys