Here's something weird that happened in the garage. I have a built in garage furnace. In the winter, when I'm not around. I keep the garage at just above freezing like 40 degrees. I do this by having a modified thermostat. One that I had taken my Dremel tool to the left side and ground out the stop so I could turn the setting way down. So anyway, my garage doesn't freeze so the cans of paint won't go bad. But when I do go out to the garage and turn up the heat, you can hear the cans of paints going "Boink" when they start to warm up. The gasses inside don't like the change in temperature and so they expand and contract. So one evening when I was working in the garage as it was warming up I heard the familiar ''Boink" and didn't think anything about it. Later on however I noticed a big puddle of reddish stuff next to the tire of the Elan. I didn't put two and two together right away so I approached the spill and peered down at it. Suddenly I realized what had happened as several drops of red primer dripped onto the back of my neck from the shelf above. A ten year old can of red oxide primer had split a seam and sprung a leak. What a mess spilt paint makes! It's also not easy to get off the back of your neck. I had my son go after the stain on my neck with some lacquer thinner. Yow , that's stronger than aftershave.
Back to work on the Europa. I began to sand down the primer. Now you don't just go around and start willy-nilly sanding. Now's the time to make sure everything is flat and all the little pin holes that show up in primed fiberglass are plugged up. I like to use a paint stick wrapped up in 220 grit paper for this phase. I take "Sticky'' and run It across all the flat surfaces in a cross hatch pattern looking for dips and high spots. Use your hand to feel any big valleys or peaks in between sanding. Sticky can also be used f'or large curves such as the front fenders. For the small tight areas and corners, I use the sanding sponge wrapped in 220 as well. The sponge is purposely made by 3M for sanding. It ensures that overly aggressive sanding fools don't lease finger marks as they sand. If you picture ''Goober" from the old TV show Andy Of Mayberry with a chunk of sandpaper, working on his 52 Chevy pick up truck, you can visualize him working the paper so hard with his fingers that he leaves marks everywhere instead of a smooth flat surface. If you ever sand without a pad and you feel the paper getting hot, you are working it too hard.
Once I worked over all the surfaces I blew off the car and wiped everything down with a clean rag and bucket of water. Not real wet, just enough to clean all the dust off so the spot putty will stick. After letting everything dry real good, I walked around the car with the spot putty and plastic applicator. Any little pin hole gets covered ..Any scratch or chip gets covered. Any low spot that shows up from sanding gets filled. You can tell a low spot by the change in color of the gray primer after sanding with sticky the stick. If it's not uniform, there is a low or high spot. High spots get worked down with the sand paper. Low Spots have to be built up. Spot putty, when applied real thin dries quickly. If you have to apply it over more than an inch in diameter area or thicker than 10 thou of an inch, maybe you should be using Bondo.
Be careful when sanding spot putty, it plugs up the sandpaper and will smear or chunk if you work it hard. Sand very, very easy. Turn the paper wrapped around sticky or the sanding pad often and slap it against your thigh to clear it out. Ouch! Not too hard. Maybe I should slap it against my butt!
After sanding everything down, applying the spot putty and sanding all that down, it's time for round two of the primer. It works the same as round one but it's usually more difficult to see where you have painted and where you have not. If you are not careful, you can miss some spots and have some thin areas that you may sand through later. It's important to have a spray pattern strategy so you have uniform and complete coverage. One coat should be left to right and the second top to bottom. Things turned out pretty good. I did my usual leaf blower cleansing of the garage and let things set for a few days.
