Spent 9 hours chasing a blend on a silver Camry quarter panel, turned out to be my gun's air cap
Kept getting a mottled look no matter what I did with the metallic mix, and a buddy at the parts counter in Dayton asked if I'd ever soaked the air cap in thinner. Swapped it out and it laid down perfect first pass. Any of you guys got a set cleaning routine for your guns or do you just run solvent through and call it good?
That line about soaking the air cap in thinner is the kind of thing that gets buried in a manual nobody reads. Funny how that works everywhere, not just in the booth. You chase the big obvious thing for hours and the fix turns out to be some small part you never thought to check. I've started keeping a little jar of thinner just for caps and tips, soak them overnight once a week, and it's saved me more than one wasted afternoon. Solvent through the gun alone doesn't touch the buildup hiding up in the cap, so I wouldn't call that good enough anymore.