Got started painting my wheels tonight. I am about to buy the other two tires so the wheels needed to be prepped. They have been recentered and sandblasted for about two years, so they have developed some rust from sitting. I *could* have paid to have them sandblasted again but didnt really want to drop that much coin, so I just wire brushed em off and wiped down with acetone. I used this primer



because it specifically says it can be applied over light surface rust. I scraped the minimal scale off so it was GTG. The only thing that sucks about the primer is it calls for 16-24 hours of curing time before applying paint over it. Since it is humid as **** down here I am leaning towards the longer end of that, but I dont want to start painting at 9pm tomorrow night. The **** is ****ing radiant in this pic



Here's the compressor I used for the painting with its brand spanking new pressue cutoff switch and popoff valve. Thanks goes to Cook and Flem for esplainin wiring the new switch in. Its rated at like 8 cfm at 90 psi and handled the draw like a champ



I deffinately need to address the air drying situation though. It was probably only 70-80% humidity here tonight but it still seems to be an issue. I have a cheapass Craftsman drier/seperator mounted on the tank and then ran a disposable filter element and then a final desicant drier to my bitchin Harbor Freight gun, seen here



Even as the last filtering element in the system, the desicant drier appeared to be half used up by the time I was done. I am planning on spraying three coats tomorrow so I will need to go buy another one...or two. It is a Kobalt brand from Lowes and the desicant inside turns clear when it is saturated and needs to be replaced. Prety spiffy. TSC had a "fancy" Cambel-Hauswhatever drier/seperator but it was ~$130 so I am going to do some research before I spend that much on something like that. I'm thinking about making a bootyfab cooler using an old truck a/c condensor and a box fan, but didnt have time to **** with it tonigh.

I also need a regulator at the gun. I looked at them today but figured the regulator coming off my tank would be sufficient. It isnt. There is no gauge after the regulator so I dont know exactly how low it goes. The way the gun was spraying indicates it was not low enough though. The pattern was not very dense and no amount of ****ing with the needle could adjust it enough. I dont know if the paint might have been a contributing factor though. The can said not to thin it if spraying and it seemed a little on the thick side. But, I cant say for sure since this is my first time ever painting anything with a gun. I'm going to get a little inline regulator tomorrow before I lay any actual paint and see where that gets me.

/blog