This vehicle came to us partially finished. Someone had made dent repairs and painted the upper portion of the vehicle. They used lacquer primer. The owner provided all of the paint materials, a type of paint we rarely use. The students block sanded the lower portion of the vehicle and sprayed lacquer primer in the fall of 2005. In the spring semester of 2006, we sanded down the vehicle and masked for top coat. All first-year students sprayed on this vehicle. The base coat application went well, except it took 5 coats of base to hide the primer, until a student noticed a prep problem in the hood and a spray gun malfunctioned. The hood had a visible ring from poor surface prep and the spray gun spurted paint on the side. We stopped to let the paint dry overnight. The next day we scuffed all the base, re-primed the spot on the hood and then sprayed two more coats of base. For some of my students this is the first time they sprayed clear coat on a customer's car.

The quarter panel on this vehicle is 7 feet long. I showed the students how to "walk" the quarter panel to apply an even coat of clear. Spraying clear coat requires that the paint be applied so wet that it almost "runs". Moving just a little too slow causes "runs" in the paint. We had a few "runs" so the next week we scraped off the runs and sanded with 2000 grit sandpaper. Some of the runs buffed out. The quarter panels did not so we sanded them for re-clearing. The paint pulled loose on a rear door, We base coated the two-tone on the rear door again and sprayed the white and black on the front and re-cleared the quarter panels.