Well since the weather is nice, today is a painting day. Before I can bolt the roll bar on permanently, I need to paint the forward Canopy decks.
This actually turned out to be much more of a pain than I was hoping it would be. I prepped everything nicely and gave a final light wipe with acetone. Then I sprayed it with one stage final coat. It was perfect! Then I noticed a fish eye on one of the rivet spots. I’m sure I could have left it as-is, but I chose to whip the paint off, clean, re-prep the area, and re-spray. This takes about an hour or two in all…so progress was slow. Crap, I got a run in the paint!!! Wipe it off…..redo all over again. The third spray was good (not prefect) but good.
In the mean time, I noticed that my paint on the forward center cover (F-982E access plate) was failing. The paint must not have mixed correctly when I first sprayed it last year?. Well.. fortunately the paint wiped off with heavy doses of acetone. The epoxy primer underneath is not phased by the acetone, do I didn’t have to really re-prime, I just had to work at getting all of the old paint off, prep and re-spray it. This time the paint was perfectly mixed. (I looked over all other interior pieces and everything was fine, this part was the only piece that had signs of paint failure).
While still on a roll with the priming and painting, I decided to give the NACA ducts some attention. I’m sure that I could have primed them just fine well after they were installed, but why not give them a good once over now while they are accessible. A gave a light wipe down of the plastic with acetone. Being very careful with the acetone as it melts this plastic.
