Hello all,

This isn't about painting a car but I'm hoping your knowledge can shed some light on my plight.

I have to paint a large industrial enclosure. It came powder coated grey but I need to change it to a lighter color.

I got an industrial coating called IMRON 2.8HG a two part high gloss polyurethane.

I prepped the entire box by sanding.
I then washed the box with an industrial detergent and a ton of water.

After drying overnight I set it up. I have a Sears oilless 2Hp vertical compressor. I jacked an air fitting into the hose and blew any dust off.

I then mixed the paint 3 parts to 1 as per the instructions.
I adjusted the HVLP gun to give an acceptable pattern and started spraying.

I got probably 50,000 pin holes in the paint job and 1,000 larger holes (fish eyes?). It was suggested that water in the air was the cause.

Dupont said once you have pin holes and fish eyes it can often be "fixed" by one or two more coats.

I purchased a filter/water separator and a large desiccant dryer. I also got an in-line throw away screw it on the gun inlet dryer. I plumbed this all together. Mixed the paint and sprayed it again.

This time no new pin holes appeared but all the bigger fish eyes just kicked the paint out. The paint seemed to make little Christmas trees in the center of all the fish eyes which then just sort of vanished.

Slowly(desperately) adding more paint to cover these holes of course then led to many butt-ugly runs.

I am now sanding the whole mess down to the powder coating again.

My questions are, after considering the history(above), what caused the pin holes? What caused the fish eyes?

I do not want a repeat..

Thanks.