Point taken on the grits; I really only did 1000 grit on the areas that really "needed it" to flatten out. The first few panels I shot were a little dry on the first coat and thus had a lot of peel in them. The later panels I shot were much flatter to start with.
I do leave a little bit of peel in when I finish the 1000 grit; I take it until I can just see the sparkles from a few of the low "dots" at a shallow angle, then I start moving up the grits, and generally by the time I hit the last grits, it's pretty dang flat.
And, all that said, SUCCESS! Using the Meguiars paper by hand finished out the panels pretty well. There are still a few straight line scratches, and I think I found one or two small pigtails from the earlier power sanding, but honestly they're hard to see even when I know to look for them, and at the end of the day, I'm building a driver, not a show car. If the paint looks great from 2' away, I don't really care if you can find some imperfections at 2" away. My request when I was getting quotes from bodyshops was paint that looked as good as my 60k mile '13 Focus ST. This paint looks better. Obviously getting it out in sunlight will be telling as well, but again, I think it's coming out very well. I can always go back and touch up the small imperfections, as well. The issue before was that I had enough imperfections in the paint that it "broke" the gloss enough that the panel looked wrong. What I have now quite literally looks like the panel is coated in a layer of glass/jewel. I'll get pictures once I get a bit more completed/cleaned up.
I am making a hell of a mess in my garage and car with the buffing compound, so once I'm done with all of this crap, I'll have to clean powered compound and little specks of it out of every crevice of the shop and the car, but whatever, it needed cleaned anyway.
I'm getting better at not making a mess, but honestly, it's just a messy job, period.
Once I get the panels on the car done (or about 8-9 days from now, whichever comes first) I'm going to re-block the hood/decklid with 320 grit and reshoot base/clear on them, then I'll re-do the color sand on them once they're cured, and I can finally get them on the car and start finishing stuff like light surrounds, door handles, etc. I want to get the front/rear glass in soon(ish) too, as I really think getting all of the panels on and the big pieces of glass will really get me a solid idea of how the car will look finished.
Anyway, after a couple weeks of frustration between electronics and paint, I'm glad to see my perseverance starting to pay off, at least a little. Now I just have to not screw up the rest of the paint finishing...
