I will shortly be bringing my "dismantled" project car down to my new residence and will be painting it. What I would like to do is paint the guards', doors, boot, bonnet and other removable panels before I bring the rolling chassis down and work on that. The reason is that I only have a 20 x 12 foot single garage to do the work in, and I don't have room to work on everything at once so I would like to apply a couple of coats of lacquer to the panels and then after squirreling those away do the required work on the body and after that is done reassemble the car and put the remaining coats on. The question is "how long" can I leave that? As there is a bit of work left to do on the body it's likely to be at least several months before I would be able to get the recently partly painted loose panels on the car and repaint the assembly, would this be too long?

After asking around as to what paint to use for quite a while (including on this site) I decided to use acrylic lacquer because that is what the original paint is, and I didn't want to have to strip it right down to bare metal to use BC/CC

Thanks blokes,
Graham

I would sand it with 600 or so before coating.
Jay D.

It will be getting a coat of primer on before any "new" lacquer colour goes on, and rubbing back accordingly is a "gibbon".

I had quite a lengthy thread on here back in October and after talking with Chris and several other experienced posters decided on using the lacquer instead of the BC/CC I had intended, and am looking forward to getting into it. My shed that was promised back in October "finally" arrived in late January and is now set up and ready to go, and I am straining at the bit to get into it.

Still need to find out how long is the most I can leave lacquer between coats though?
Graham

What Jay means, and I agree, is that if you stop spraying, you can wait for any amount of time, as long as you sand the surface before shooting another coat. A week, a month, a year.....
Lacquer melts into itself, so there isn't any special prep, to recoat it. Just clean, lightly sand, and go.

Thanks "chopolds" that's exactly what I needed to know ! and thanks also Jay, I think I misunderstood what you were trying to say.

Thats good to know guys ! I asked a very similar question last October in relation to using BC/CC and was told "don't do it", because of base coat being porous and the risks associated with moisture, but after more discussion on what I was doing, I have "listened" to the advice of more experienced people than I and changed my plans and now intend to use acrylic lacquer. I have done several "lacquer jobs" in the past, but they were on complete cars that were not dismantled, and I just wanted to check that I wasn't going to cock it all up by doing something that "still" wasn't right.

Thanks Blokes !