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I wanted to give you an update on how the painting of the two front fenders and the hood went last week, though "update" might be a generous word for the comedy of errors that actually took place!

As I had planned, I set up my painting area outside under a canopy. Even with plastic walled up around the space, painting outdoors seemed like the only way to handle the overspray I always seem to get in my garage. After final prep and wipe-down, I started spraying, and initially, it was going on like glass. I laid down a very light coat, followed by a medium wet second coat.
Right as I started the third coat, my spray gun ran out of paint before I had a chance to finish the hood. No big deal, I thought—I just mixed up a fresh batch and sprayed the third coat on the hood. At that exact point, it looked fabulous.
And then nature intervened.

A sudden gust of wind came up and blew a bunch of maple "whirly-jig" seeds right into the fresh paint on the hood. Luckily, I had tweezers on hand just in case a bug or two landed in it. I quickly grabbed them and snatched up the seed, but unfortunately, the seed's paper wing got stuck right in the paint.

In a panic, I grabbed some new blue disposable towels and a gallon of what I thought was lacquer thinner to wipe out the remnants of the wing. In my haste, it actually turned out to be wax and grease remover. Needless to say, that did nothing except leave little pieces of blue shop towel embedded directly in the wet paint.

I quickly realized my mistake, scrambled to find the actual lacquer thinner, and was finally able to remove both the wing and the paper towel pieces. Naturally, this left a horrific landscape of "mountains and valleys" in the fresh paint. Desperate to salvage it, I applied three more coats of paint to the affected area, hoping I’d just be able to sand and buff it all out later.

At first glance in the garage, the fenders actually looked really good. But after sanding and buffing with heavy-cut compound, disaster struck again: the color appeared significantly lighter than the cab. I decided to push the truck out into the natural daylight to see if it was just the garage lighting playing tricks on me. My suspicions proved correct—the mismatch was painfully obvious. The only thing I can figure is that I must have applied four medium-wet coats to the cab originally, and only three to the hood and fenders.

So, I’m back to the drawing board. I’ll be spraying another coat to fix the color match, but this time I’m moving indoors to the garage for a much more controlled environment.

To look on the bright side, at least I found one silver lining. In addition to fixing the debacle on the hood, there's a little dent right on top of the passenger side fender that sticks out like a sore thumb now, and since I have to redo the paint anyway, I'll be able to fix that too.