Spent 6 hours chasing a paint run on a door I already cleared, all because of one drop of oil in my air line
Two Fridays back I shot a door on a silver Corolla and got a fat sag right under the belt line that would not flow out no matter what I tried. I wet sanded it down three times, re-cleared twice, and still kept getting tiny fish eyes popping up in the same spot. Turned out my inline filter was shot and a little oil was riding through the gun, so every coat I laid down was fighting itself. A $12 filter and a new water trap fixed in 10 minutes what ate my whole afternoon and a half pint of clear. Anybody else get fooled by air problems that look just like technique problems?
Learned that lesson the hard way too. Chased a rough spot on a bumper for two hours once, kept blaming my gun setting and my mix, turned out the compressor had been sitting with a bad drain valve and was pushing moisture the whole time. Funny how that works in life too, you keep messing with the thing right in front of your face when the real problem is upstream and quiet. Now I drain the tank and check my filters before I even touch the gun.