Bodywork, Paint, Interior, Trim, & Wiring

I'm in the middle of painting my Hillman, and I came across something that the rest of you might file away for your knowledge. Do not, under any circumstances, DO NOT USE DUPLICOLOR WAX & GREASE REMOVER. I ran out of the normal stuff I usually use last week, so Thursday night as I was preparing to put on the color coats I ran down to our local O'Reilly Auto and asked for wax & grease remover. They directed me to the Duplicolor stuff and I thought, "I guess its all the same, right?" Well, I guessed wrong, and I failed to trust the warning bells that were going off in my head as I was using it. To put it lightly, this stuff is like wiping your car down with diesel fuel. It leaves a shiny film on the car and it DOES NOT dry. I left it over night, and "assumed" it would be okay when I painted friday. I started painting on the inside of the car and watched as literally hundreds of fish eyes appeared in the paint. What a sickening feeling after months of work. Anyway, I stopped right there, albeit with a quart of paint already mixed with hardener in it. I wiped the entire car down again with some Omni reducer that I had on the shelf, and for the most part it turned out okay. I still have a handful of fish eyes on the car that I'm going to have to fix, but overall I'm pleased with how it's going. I have never had problems with fish eyes in the past. So to summarize:

DUPLICOLOR WAX & GREASE REMOVER = FISH EYES = ANGER/CURSING/MISERY

Eeeek!

That's a good color. Looks period correct. Is it an original Hillman color?

Curtis, the paint is Glacier Blue acrylic urethane from the TCP Global "Restoration Shop" line. Kind of a budget "pick from these 6 blues" line of paint. I really didn't want to spend a lot on the paint for this car as I, a) wasn't sure how well the body work would turn out (pretty well actually!) and, b) I plan to drive the crap outa this thing!

The stock color wasn't as vibrant of a blue, but I actually like this a lot. I think your "period correct" comment is the phrase I've been looking for to describe it. It reminds me a lot of Iris blue on early mob's.

Ryan, usually you wipe on w&g remover with a clean rag, then wipe it off while still wet with another til dry, BTW the body work looks great(saw the dark gray primer), I know you did a lot of metalwork on that baby !
Dave Craddock

Thanks Dave! Actually, that is the procedure I followed. Wipe on with a clean rag, and then wipe off. BUT, I should have known there was going to be a problem when it wasn't completely drying right away. Like I said, there was a shiny/greasy film on the car. Thankfully I started painting on the floors inside, so I knew I had to stop right away. I ended up with about 6 fisheyes on the outside of the car that I will have to fix. I'm not going to sand and repaint entire panels, so I'm going to experiment with a tiny sanding disc (I'm thinking a psa sand disc cut to the size of a pencil eraser, with the pencil in my electric drill) to sand the tiny area of the fisheye. Then dab epoxy primer in the hole. Level with my easy sand filler, then a repaint of the small area. Sand and buff. Who knows how it will work? The single stage urethane is easy to work with and I've had good luck with small area repairs like this in the past. We'll see.

Ryan, you're not the first guy That has had problems with w&g remover, in some shops ,who are always in a hurry, they suffered solvent pops from not allowing it to dry long enough after application. I think your approach to fix the fisheyes will work just fine.
Another situation that happens when using dish soap while wet sanding, this works great when sanding before buffing, but
when sanding primer or other substrates, the soap leaves traces of the surfactants on the surface which can lead to fisheyes.
Dave