My 2nd car was a 66impala. Basicly it was a learner car...I learned a LOT about car stuff with it. I re-wired it headlights to taillights, had a 350/350th put in to replace the 283/glide. I then striped the body and did the body work and painted it in a buddy's family dinnet store
. I asked MANY body guys for tips along the way. Keep things clean. I got compliments on how straight it was and how the gaps were about perfect for a 1st time car done by a 17yr old.
Take your time and remove as many of the body pannels as you can and prep/paint them off the car so you can focus on those areas better. Remove the head/tail lights and look for some spares...even if you need to resort to "getting" some spares off a say a ranger
to keep whatever rims you have nice.
read up on the topic of sanding and primer/sealer. Also use a guide coat to help get things even if there are any low spots. The more you sand the straighter the car will look...and you will hate sanding when your done. You will probably want to at least skuff up and go down to the base coat (not primer) of the whole cars paint before priming/sealing. Lots of light and using your hands to feel for low/rough spots (hands in rubber gloves) will help find areas that need work.
before you spray anything wipe the car down to make sure you have it as clean as possible, use rubber gloves while working any part of the body work...the oil from your skin can get into any part of the product and contaminate it. If your sparying it at home in a makeshift paint booth...aka wraped the garage in plastic drops sheets, it is a good idea to kinda sprinkle a LIGHT mist of water from a hose on the floor to keep the dust down and put a fan in a window/door blowing out of the garage helping air circ. while wrapping a wet towel around the fan part facing the "paint area" as a half arse filter. Doing it in a warmer temp will help with paint dry time...if it is cold try a heater...or a lot of drop lights pointing at the body.
From my exp./what others told me, generally you will need 1gal of paint to get a good coverage of base on the car there are formulas for some paints depending on what the mix ratio is. Then about the same for clear...gen. 3 or so coats of clear is rec. many more and the clear depending on make/type can actually look a little yellow. The 3 coats also gives you some room to wet sand and get rid of any orange peel. Let the paint flash before putting the next coat on this will vary but IIRC it is around 15-20min each. This helps for a even dry with multi layers going on. Get a primer/sealer/paint/clear that all are made to work together...some primer/sealers will not react well to other types of paint/clears and cause bubbles/peeling. Try not to save by using "left overs" as air will already have gotten to that product and it may not match the rest of the stuff your using...or worse peel/bubble because some chem. has evapd.
I would practice a little with the gun like while priming/sealing and when actually sparying the paint/clear run some "tests" on something NOT part of the car to get a feel for how the paint/gun/you work together. Maybe the underside of the hood. You should overlap about 1/2 of each pass and not too much that it runs but not too little it looks blotchy.
The biggest equipment issue for quality is a water sep. for the air line...as well as a evap/dryer setup...some people even run the air line into a bucket of cold water before going into the filters/dryers to cool the air from the compressor. Hot air from a compressor will have water that will not get cought by the dryer/evap until the air is cool...cool it before it gets there and you run a better chance of getting that water (now condensed(sp?) from vapor) out of the line. Use a good name brand gun and make sure the compressor can keep the min. air volume for that gun.
You will need to figure out if your going to use a base clear system or a single stage. The base clear is 2 sep. applications/products. The single stage basicly has the clear in it. Research both and see if one or the other suits you more.
