How many layers coats???

I have a 8.25 RuffStuff diff cover and sanded it down to bare metal, cleaned it, and primered it. When i did the primer layer, I'd spray maybe 2-3 light coats all about a couple min apart (per instructions). I let that dry for a couple of hours and do another 2-3 light coats a couple min apart. i'd let that dry for a day. then i put about 2-3 light coats of gloss protective enamel a few min apart. i'd let that dry up to an hour and put some more coats down. 6 coats of rusto-leum gloss red. I let it all dry out for about 4 days and when i touch the cover with my finger nail it leaves a mark but doesnt break the paint. Is this the nature of the spray paints i used or did i use too many layers of paint? I ask this cause when you touch some other things that are painted, they dont make indentations or stencil marks behind.

Sounds like it isn't dry yet. I had a similar problem with my bumper, but after a solid week or so it finally started to harden. Someone with paint experience will chime in, but I think it will harden in time.

rustoleum takes a long time to dry solid especially if you did several coats

Put it in a oven,:flame: maybe not your oven, electric would be best, I would heat the oven up to 200 and then turn it off and put the cover in, the heat should help speed up the drying process. I think you could have used half as many coats as you did. Chances are if it drags on a rock, it's gonna go through 6 coats of paint as easily as 3 coats. Find a used old oven for free on CL or a toaster oven from a thrift shop/yard sale. Probably more trouble than it's worth but it should help. You could also put a high powered flood light/heat lamp close to it, just make sure you don't get it so close where the heat burns the paint.

With spray bomb, all your really want to do is put enough on to prevent rust. It's going to come off as soon as you brush something anyway.

You're experiencing the flash of the paint. Dry to the touch, but not cured. With urethane based stuff, flash time is like 15 minutes, cure time a couple hours. Enamel and lacquer based paint (spray bomb), flash time could be hours, and cure time can be days or weeks. Literally.

If you can afford to keep the axle out, I would just set it in the sun for a few days.

DanMan2k06 said:

With spray bomb, all your really want to do is put enough on to prevent rust. It's going to come off as soon as you brush something anyway.

You're experiencing the flash of the paint. Dry to the touch, but not cured. With urethane based stuff, flash time is like 15 minutes, cure time a couple hours. Enamel and lacquer based paint (spray bomb), flash time could be hours, and cure time can be days or weeks. Literally.

If you can afford to keep the axle out, I would just set it in the sun for a few days.

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Its off the diff as of now. i didnt know if i f'ed it up and should start over.

but like ppl said as soon as it sees a rock its goin to get scratched whether its 4 or 40 layers.

thanks