Painting my car. Need input and Tips

[nonovurbizniz]

It all depends on the job you want to do and how much you want to spend...

I have a question though... Why are you buying a gun if you're getting it painted by a shop?... if it's to prime then I guess it's worth it as long as you spend the time to get a good job done/finished...

It's all about spending the time to have it come out right... That sander isn't really all that great.. you want a dual-action ideally. And unless you're doing this a couple times it's not really worth it... Even if you get an air sander there's still TONS of sanding to be done by hand and with a block...

My best suggestion would be to use a chemical paint stripper... they work great and make it MUCH easier...

Then it's all metal prep.. you want to get everything as straight and smooth as possible w/o using filler or bondo... that's really supposed to be more of a skim coat to get better adhesion between the paint and metal...

Finally you want to find out from the paint shop what grit they recomend you sanding the primer to... if you go to high it may not stick as well as it would've with a rougher primer coat...

take your time be patient and remember... there are NO disasters in body work... it's ALL repairable... so take your time and don't stress out if you F something up...

OH... and to tell the truth even if you do a MINT job primering it and prepping it... the shop could still slap a 1/2 a$$ job on top of it so be carefull and explain to them what you're expecting and exactly what you will NOT settle for... (I had a car that I brought back 3 times before I gave up... it was better than the first pick up but still not what I wanted or was satisfied with (it was associated with an accident not an all-over job though)).

So be carefull depending on how good your primer coat comes out you may find that you'll get better results doing it yourself and spending some extra time cleaning up the paint after it's layed...