I was finally able to post a picture of my 71 RR, go back to my earlier post and check out a single stage pain job.

Thanks again for all the info.

My situation is this: I sold my last old mopar some years ago (time flies) and I'm considering getting back into the old car hobby by getting a '60s or '70s car that is solid but cheap, which will probably end up being a an unpopular 4-door (but still something that I like). I occasionally kick myself for passing on a '69 Satellite sedan a few years ago that was low-mileage and solid but ratty paint - it ended up getting parted by some dude who had a rotten Charger.

I have recently been looking at a couple cars that have flat, faded metallic paint, so of course I'm considering what would be the cheapest way (without overly sacrificing quality of materials) to spray myself but not have it look too terrible. Perfect is not required, but I'm not into the rat rod look.

I've only sprayed single-stage with a gun once before (metallic green) and it didn't come out too bad, but I'm thinking if I totally suck at it now then I would have to look at getting it done by somebody.

That's the basis of my questions. I haven't bought a car yet and am not sure if I'm going to consider the ones I've looked at or hold off. So, it's a good opportunity to consider how to handle the paint situation.

Plus, I've heard horror stories on the cost of nice paint jobs being like triple of what I would consider paying for the car in the first place. Hence, being concerned about cost.

At the moment I'm leaning towards single stage because I wouldn't want to deal with the clearcoat peeling issue. I figure that a decent single stage job wouldn't look much worse than what they applied back in the day, as long as the metallic didn't end up all splotchy, as you all have been describing.

So, thanks for all the input. Any other comments/advice would be muchly appreciated.

First off, most of the costs come into play with the pre-paint prep. The actual painting is not that much of the budget. Painting an entire car and then cutting and buffing should be able to be accomplished in a few days. But the prep can often stretch to weeks.

And contrary to a previous posters experience, base/clear does not have a problem with peeling.

Virtually every new vehicle built the last 35+ years has been base/clear. Notice many peelers? And only a couple of the responses here has noted a problem with it.

Like many others here, I have sprayed both. I am not a professional painter by any means, but I have never had clear peel on one of my jobs. Never. But I have seen it happen. And the problem always comes down to mis-matched products or poor prep. Base/clear is no more prone to problems than single stage.

Spray what you want, just don't let an isolated negative experience or two sway you the wrong way.

Back when I worked at the Chevy dealership they had a recall on S-10 pickups with bad clearcoat - ones with white paint specifically. They gave us a list of vin #'s and we rounded them up and put them in a row so the body shop guys could pull them apart and strip + repaint the window jambs. We were told the factory told the dealerships that the clearcoat on that batch of trucks could lift causing the glue-in glass to come out with it.

They did not repaint the whole truck. just the window jambs. I guess a complete repaint wasn't covered, and they would play the waiting game and fix the whole paint job later if the paint on those particular started to let go prematurely?

i agree 100%

i am a PPG certified painter. been certified since they started the certification in the late 80's. i currently spray water basecoat clearcoat. i started painting PPG basecoat clearcoat since DBU was first introduced in the early to mid 80's.
i have never had a clear coat peel problem in over 30 years.

if you have a peeling problem you did something wrong.
5 biggest errors.
most common mistake is lack of film build on the clearcoat.
second one is spraying the last coat of basecoat on to dry.
trapped solvents.
then contamination of film build.
mixing manufacturers products.

Why are all of the 90's cars bare metal now?

do you mean why did the paint fall off cars in the 90's?

the biggest reason is because the manufacturers didn't put enough paint on the cars.

with not enough paint on the car allowed the ultraviolet light to penetrate the chemical bond between the sealer and the color coat. causing the color to de-laminate between the 2 coats.

i have painted thousands of cars with that problem.
at a high volume dealer body shop i probably painted at least 10 completes a week for 5 years.

Umm, yeah. Periodically I'll buy one for cheap, clean it up, repaint it and make a couple bucks of side cash for my troubles. I have a toyota in my garage right now, peeled everywhere, doing a single stage job on it because it was just a solid color car.

Thanks again for all the replies!

I was thinking of going single stage red urethane and then water sanding and then clear coating.

My brother has been spraying cars for years. He can spray single or base coat but me personally I'm a big PPG fan. Here's my car in Deltron FF4. Sprayed the complete car with it, trunk, jambs and engine compartment. Can't wait to get it out in the sun.

you can do that no problem. you will have less texture and the gloss retention will be better. the problem is it will look just like a BC CC paint job. when you clear solid single stage paint you are just replacing the BC with single stage color. i would recommend tinting the CC with 30% of the color. you will be spraying a really translucent color over your blocked out color. you won't need coverage because the solid color you blocked out does that. painting this way will give you really good depth when you look at it. it will have much better gloss than just a solid color. when you mix paint this way, mix it with whichever ratio uses the most catalyst. with PPG i know the solid color mix ratio is different than the CC ratio.


when i spray DCC single stage solid color i paint 2 coats of mixed solid color. i then put 4 coats of solid color mixed 30% color 70% dcu2021 clear. i them block out and buff. the clear added to the color makes it much easier to buff. it will have really good depth also.
when i paint it's in a down draft baking booth so there isn't much difference in bake times. when spraying this way air dry add about 20% more dry time before cutting and buffing due to more film build.