Painting Steel Wheels Part 2

IMPORTED FROM OLD BLOG

The backs of the wheels turned out great! But when I started on the faces I got fisheye`d on the first white coat!!! (Sorry, forgot to take pics.)

I debated stripping the paint or letting it dry and sanding back to metal. Sanding had the benefit of not disturbing the backs of the wheels that turned out so well. So I decided to wait a couple days for the wheels to dry then sand.

3 days later.... I could still scrape with my thumbnail! The paint was like a thick paste! WTF? I thought it would be sandable by now...

So I emailed Rustoleum. Here was their response:

If the metal has had all of the rust removed, part of the problem may be the choice of primer. The 7769 Rusty Metal Primer is intended for use on rusted metal only. It has a fish-oil additive that lets it penetrate into the rust; if there`s no rust the fish oil will move to the surface of the primer and will affect the adhesion and sometimes the drying of topcoats applied over it.

Also, we normally recommend a thinning of 1:10 acetone to paint. The lower level of a quicker drying solvent will greatly improve the dry through time. But even under optimum conditions we don`t expect full adhesion until about a week after application.

Hardners and accelarants are not recommended with these paints.

So they suggest using acetone instead of mineral spirits, even though the label specifically says to only use mineral spirits. Ok, I can do that.

But a week to fully cure still? Ugh.

I`ll keep using this paint (especially since I discovered the custom color at Ace that is an almost perfect match to our Sage Green VW paint!) I just need to keep in mind the limitations.