Took some pictures recently after a wash, needs a good buff and touch up in various places, but overall I'm still really satisfied.

 

Interlux Brightside?

Looks good.

 

Yep.

 

Closer pics?

 

Well see if I get off my *** tomorrow.

 

Well, this pretty much just sealed the deal on how I'm painting my car. I can get boat paint for a good price through work ( I work for a commercial fishing company. If you've ever eaten a fish sandwich or surimi, theres a good chance it was from us ) but I just wanted to see long term followup on another miata first. Quick question because I'm lazy. Did you thin it out, or just run it as is?

 

I still can't believe roll on paint can look that good

 

Wow. One of your pics need to be in the calendar.

 

Looks good, and I want your lights!

 

This trumps any rustoleum'd cars I've ever seen. It has a nice sheen as well, can't wait to see some close ups.

 

In for close up pics! looks good!

 

Thanks for the kind words guys.

I put it on as is. Really it's all in the wetsand / buff. It's very time consuming. Some parts aren't as shiny because I didn't have time to wetsand it to perfection while other parts are great. I still need to give some panels on the passenger side another coat so I figure I'm going to try and spray them the next time and see if that comes out any better with less sanding. My trunk is garbage so I'm going to experiment with clear coating that also. Overall though, I think I used under a 100 dollars worth of paint.

 

1) How long has it been since you painted?
2) Parked outside?
3) What did you use to buff? Random orbital buffer?

 

1.) Finished painting July 18, 2009
2.) It's only parked outside, never inside ( garage is a disaster ), I've probably only washed my car 3 times since then too. Buffed once sometime in October.
3.) I used a porter cable 7424 6" which may be discontinued, polishing compound, and very soft pads. I think you just need something capable of reasonable rpms. I didn't need the 6k rpms it was capable of but I kept it at about 3-4k which is more than most cheap buffers you find at your hardware stores are capable of IIRC.

And I would NOT recommend using the Brightside black, it's impossible to get it to look good without an incredible amount of work. Even still its got a slight satin finish, which is somewhat cool I guess, but definitely not a gloss black. I'm going to try and clear coat all the black surfaces this summer and see what happens. Can't speak for the rustoleum one.

 

Sorry, a couple more questions:

1) Did you do a color change?
2) Did you use body filler or primer?
3) Since you can't tell in pics, can it pass for a regular paint job? Has anyone who's seen it comment on the paint? It looks great. It might be the pics, but does it look a little matte?
4) What did you use to polish? (turtle wax, po boys, meguiars etc)

Thanks.

 

1) full color change from red.
2) primer on any bare metal
3) I've had people assume it was a regular spray job aside from the HT and trunk. The quality of the job really depends on the time you spend wetsanding. I'm positive I could get my paint looking even better if I threw down a coat or two more and spend a little more time on the wetsand. When I ran out of time I stopped at 2000 grit. I should have gone higher.
4) I used turtle wax polishing compound then turtle wax the first time.

Here's some shots I was able to get. They're not the best considering the lighting and weather.

 

hmmmm tempting

 

I'm a little surprised you used the softer pads for the PC. Wouldn't you want a more aggressive cut since you're looking for major paint correction? Or is the paint too soft/thin for this?

 

Man, that looks great.

 

The paint goes down thin, yes, but its hard. The guy running the detailing shop I got the pads at convinced me to go with the softer pads since the aggressive ones would most likely leave streaks. Much like those wool pads.