Shiney Red Boot

This weekend while I was doing nothing, I decided to have another go at improving the appearance of the Miata trunk lid. Ultimately I would like to get the car repainted next spring but in the mean time I was just trying to cover up some primer that had surfaced. The wind alone was the culprit for the exposed primer on the boot.

The first step was to wet sand off the remaining primer from the last attempt. I don't know what went wrong, but I ended up with a horrible mess. The clear had wrinkled up badly. This took about 45 minutes. I used 5 grits of paper attempting to be careful not to sand through any of the base coat. I did have one blowout about the size of a nickle. No worries though.

I applied 4 medium coats of clear. I think I was using rustolem, but I don't recall for sure. So far so good. I did all the work in the garage with the door up. I ended up with a few dust particles in the paint and a couple of drips (not runs) from the paint can nozzle. The surface has good color and is fairly smooth with the few exceptions I already mentioned. A little time wet sanding should remove the orange peel. Good Job. I think when I am done it will actually look better than the bonnet.

Yeah, yeah, I never can remember which is which. Boot and bonnet. I had to look it up to verify I was using them correctly.

102

Last night as I was driving to school, the weather man on the radio reported the temperature to be 99 F with a heat index of 102. Nice evening to have the top down. Actually it wasn't so bad with the car moving while the sun wasn't shining on me directly.

Forecast for the rest of the week: hotter.