spray painting advice

[andy14a]

Im gona be spraying some plastic bits on my car soon and was just wondering if anyone has a difinitive guide. Looked around the net and there's not much suprisingly. I know roughly what im doing but dont want to muck it up and have to buy another can of specialy mixed paint.
Is it nessesary to use a plastic primer and then a white base coat ontop, or is priming and top coat enough. Also should i sand after each top coat, and then before applying lacquor, or is it ok to just apply coats straight ontop of each other. Thanks

[andy14a]

[Sx Olli]

depend to the bits that ur paintin, and the suface that ur paintin on. What colour are u painting? and what paints are u using?

[andy14a]

im painting the rear number plate surround in damsen and tinting the rear lights. got the paint made up from halfrauds at £10 for a 300ml can only place that i could get the colour from though.

[bond_200]

I'm afraid I can't help you with the painting advice, but how do you take the number plate surround off? Is it just screwed on or something? Might be interested in doing that for my s14.

And you could have got your paint from paints4u.com. I've just got 2 400ml cans through for the s14 pearl white colour (£11 a can I think) - so I'm sure they'd have the damson colour.

[Sx Olli]

Andy14a, as i recall the plastic is textured? best bet is to wash it well in washing up liquid and dry, prep well with red scoth brite, or sand well with 320, nothing to corse as it'll go 'furry' and wash and dry again.
Plastic prime and leave dry 10-15 minutes, and high build prime (3-4 good coats), availble in cans i think and leave to dry depending on what it says on the can...might be overnight?
Sand with 500 wet or dry (wet sand)...dry well,
Base...i would have thought being any decent paint it should be base coat, 3-4 coats should be good enough, the first couple put on for coverage, next two for eveness, spray two coats side to side and two up and down, hopefully the cans have a decent fan on them. dont spray too close or itll go stripy, Leave to dry...should only take 20 minutes room temp.
Lacquer... Spray one light mist coat for adheasion, one med coat for build and one coat for finish...wait 10-15 mins between coats - dont rush, thats where problems happen.
hope this helps.

[Ramps]

If you're using the Halfrauds mixed paint, I'd check the colour match before going too far

I had 3 or 4 cans made up by them, and each was slightly different
I saw them do the mixing for the last can, and it was done by counting the number of drips from a syringe so i lost confidence

In the end, I got some more mixed up by a paint supplier, and used the Halfrauds stuff for a couple of base coats