David_64

John, Many thanks for your precious advice, and my apologies for my late response. I was quite busy with work stuff last week. I would like to proceed as you suggest. However, I have a few questions: 1. The first thing I should do is to wash the body in soapy water to get the wax off. Is that correct? 2. I have kebab sticks similar to the one you show on the picture. It's not entirely clear from your explanation where I should stick the abrasive. Should I stick it on the small "vertical" edge on the left hand side of your picture OR on the longer "horizontal" edge on the bottom side of your picture OR on both? 3. Once I have stuck the abrasive to the kebab stick, should I sand the entire door panel, or just the "corner" parts where the previous polishing did not reach well enough. If you think I should do the entire door panel, should I then not also do the roof? If you need to see a picture of the roof before deciding, I can send you one. 4. How many passes with what grits should I do? Best, David

On this one the deficiencies are quite apparent:

This any better:

Here is the results after all the work described below: Here is a description of what I did to get to this result: 1. I stripped everything off, including primer with EPA. 2. I airbrushed with Tamiya acrylic flat black (2 or 3 coats). 3. I let it dry for a week. 4. I airbrushed Zero-Paints 2 K Clear. The result was not great. The finish was not smooth and there were quite a few dust marks. 5. I wet sanded with 1500, 2000, 3000, 4000, 8000 and 12000 grit. 6. I applied Meguiar's Scratch X 2.0 (three passes). 7. I applied Meguiar's Deep Crystal Polish. 8. I applied Meguiar's Deep Crystal Carnauba Wax. If any experts are still following this thread, I'd like to get some feedback on how poor/good you think the result is. One thing I am not entirely happy with are the window edges. These still look rough, because I did not dare to sand them, worrying that I would burn through the paint. Best, David

Dear friends, During the summer, I wasn't motivated to do much work on the little Avant. Now that winter is coming, I've turned my attention to it again. Some of you may recall the disastrous results of the zero-paints 2K clear because of the "spitting" effect: I've tried to correct this and I'll show you the results in the next post. David

Friends and Tutors, You may notice some slowdown in activity in this thread. This is entirely due to the good weather in Geneva and upcoming holidays. When the sun shines, I am inclined to play golf and spend time splashing about in the lake, rather than figuring out how to properly attach one piece of plastic to another in a room filled with noxious fumes. Hope to be able to count our your continued support when activity picks up again. David

You're right. Bad call on my part. This is not the place to discuss this. The model building spirit is good for this world.

Fellows, in particular the British ones: What the heck happened with this Brexit???????

very nice…. i see you painted the brakes, the exhaust and the radiators…. Did you have trouble getting the forks in?

Go for it. This thing cost me 275 CHF and it's plastic!

This case is insanely expensive. I looked around a long time for an alternative. There was something really nice in the UK recommended by someone on this site, but it was in glass and they don't ship to Switzerland. Finally, I decided to buy the thing. I even put a plastic bag on the bike while waiting for the case to arrive, as I was worried dust would accumulate on the steering assembly

Somewhat of topic, but I thought that those of you who followed the Pocher Ducati Panigale thread might be interested to know how this beautiful machine looks in its display case (which I just received):

Here's probably the final pic for the Ducati. I've bought the display case, as I could not accept the thought of dust accumulating on this fine piece of machinery:

Thanks for the feedback…. I'll sand the tighter areas as clean as I can…. Believe it or not, this is actually the third go…. In the very beginning, I had painted this body with Tamiya gloss black from a rattle can. This was my very first serious paint job. The result were quite decent (after 6 layers, lots of micro-mesh sanding in between, and applying micro-gloss) and are posted at the start of this thread. However, I wanted to learn how to airbrush…. so I stripped everything off, and then painted it again with an airbrush… the results were really good, I thought (also see above)…. But then I applied the 2K…. and disaster struck…. you know the rest. I really do hope that I don't need to strip it again!

Here is the result of the stripping with IPA: I hope this is good enough for reapplying primer and paint.