Painted skirt, skin panels, back plates and power coupler

Another busy day!

First, on the front of the skirt, one of the slabs had a tiny "divot" in it, from my over drilling the hole from the backside. For this, I just put a dab of silicone in the hole, scraped it smooth with a popsicle stick (I went with orange, you can consume which flavor you like!). An hour later I put a light coat of primer on it, then 15 minutes later some satin white paint.


While I had the white paint out, I sanded all the primed parts from last week with some 400 grit sandpaper. I then gave each piece a light coat of satin white. The back side of the skirt STILL has wet Loctite on it, apparently not all of the adhesive mixed. Priming over it was a bit of a mess, which I sanded up and cleaned up as best I could. I'll have to basically cover it up in paint. Thankfully its a spot no one will see.


While that was drying, I unpacked the other pocket vent and side vents from a run that was done a few years ago. I just figured while I was priming and painting, I would get these small blue pieces done. On the left is the back plate for the pocket vent while the other two are the side vent plates.


With that part done, it was time to do battle with the power couplers.

Blue masking tape, gas duster, empty baggy, paint brush, liquid latex and a phillips head screw driver, ready to do battle.

After sitting around my workbench for weeks, it was obvious I couldn't wipe free all the dust, even with the wedges removed. Good ole gas duster to the rescue! (Also very effective at removing overweight, curious cats from their quest to investigate your activities!)


Most importantly, bag up those little pieces! And, optimally, remember where you place said little baggie!


While I know I can use Liquid Latex to mask off the coupler, I really wanted to use tape as much as possible. The center part was pretty tough to get just right. My big concern was covering the entire side of the coupler in tape.

And again, the same thing with the face plate. I just didn't want to be brushing latex all day long.


Liquid Latex in place. This took over 2 hours to do and pardon the "colorful metaphors" but doing so really sucked ass. The Liquid Latex goes on very, very thin. I would do one coupler, start on the other, then add another coat to the first. Just to get what you see below was about 4 coats. (After a while, you start convincing yourself no one would have noticed if you bothered to paint them or not!)

I probably should have waited several more hours but after letting them sit in the sun for an hour and a half, I figured it was time to paint them up. If I'm wrong, they get an acetone bath and we try again!

Being very, very small pieces to paint, you really just dab the spray paint on them.


And here we go with the blue....glad everything has tape and latex on them! What a mess!


And finally, some clear gloss to bring out the blue.


While all of that stuff is drying for the next 24 hours, I'm headed back into the shop to work on the center foot casters!