I spent the past couple of days grinding, filling, sanding, and priming. The tank became the first victim to my fury. Armed with a sander, I removed all of the factory paint to bare metal. And a good decision this was, as the tank had surface rust under the factory primer. Once I smoothed my fiberglass filler and topcoated it with glazing putty, it was time for a thin coat of etching primer. So far so good. Things, however, did not work out that well, since I screwed up. What did I do wrong? Well, prior to priming, I wiped the tank down with some paint thinner (yeah, a bad choice, but that's what I had on hand). At first all appeared fine, but when I topcoated the etching primer with a sandable primer, one repaired area showed signs on trouble. The largest repair patch on the tank soaked up the paint thinner and, despite the hot sunny day, did not dry well enough. To make this short, the sandable primer bubbled up by day 2, and never hardened. I ground the filler out tonight, cleaned the metal, feathered the surrounding area, and applied some new filler. Now it's a waiting game. The rest of the tank is almost done, wet-sanded with a 320 grit, and ready for the last primer coat, which will come once all is smooth and the damaged area repaired.
Of course, the dreaded part still awaits me: Sanding the glass and prepping it for paint, which will take some time to do.
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