Wheel painting advice

[porschenut]

A little background first: I picked up a set of phone dials that I'm going to use for the track, and two of them had runout issues that were fixed by a local shop. In the process, the finish on those two was trashed. So, I figured I could strip them all, and shoot some color and clear and make them look factory fresh.

So I used a chemical stripper that removed every last bit of original paint and primer on one of them. But the aluminum underneath is really rough. I bought two cans each of Wurth self-etching primer, silver lacquer and clear lacquer from Pelican, which according to all my research is supposed to be what the factory used. OK. But after two coats of primer, two coats of silver, and 2 coats of clear, the wheels still have a rough finish that is definitely not the same as the other wheels that still have the original finish on them. I think the color is pretty close, but not an exact match, but the real issue is the texture. What did the factory do to make the paint smooth that I didn't do? Is it possible to duplicate (or nearly so) the original finish in my garage with no special equipment or experience and just rattle cans? The best I've been able to do looks very amateurish. What's the secret?

[Steve Marshall]

I just did a touch up paint job on the door of my beater 73T. I got the paint from paintscratch.com (where else can you find sepia brown in a spray can?) Their application instructions are very specific about buffing the clear coat out with medium rubbing compound. Not fine, not heavy, medium. I have buffed the area once and it made a big difference. I think after another buffing I'll have her looking pretty good. But the inital results without buffing were quite poor. Even hazy.