I'm going to take a stab at painting a hood I have and I've been told that I can use pretty much any kind of primer to prime it. Is this true? The color coats (2 different paints, 1 purple, 1 black) will be Deltron 2000 and Centari acrylic enamel. I also have a 2nd question. What is the best product to use to smooth out low spots and fill in dings on a hood?

If you don't have any primer yet I'd buy a quart of PPG DPLF epoxy primer in whatever color you need and run with that.

Evercoat makes good body filler as does 3M ect. If you get it from an autobody paint vendor you should be getting something good. Bondo from an auto parts store maybe not so much.

Depending on what type of metal issues you have you can fill them with multiple coats of primer and then sand it smooth. I've done this before using separate primer coat applications letting each cure before proceeding with the next one until the surface was level with the surrounding areas. Works good for filling those little dings and minor creases that you can't get at with a hammer and dolly.

If you are looking to fill and block out low spots you want to use a 2k high build primer. If I was going all out for a perfect job, I would media blast strip to bare metal, hammer and dolly as needed, shoot with epoxy primer, scuff and fill any low spots with filler, shoot with 2k high build, block as needed, shot with sealer scuff and then finally paint.

Centari acrylic enamel, Im assuming single stage? You better have ideal conditions to paint in and dont try to cover it in one shot. Two light coats let flash then one top coat. If you can go with a two stage it will be more forgiving. High metallics in the purple?? I only use single stage on engine compartments and trunks.

The step you list right before paint - "sealer scuff" - What is that?

I was interested in this as well as I'll be re-shooting a tailgate this winter. I've heard two different things regards to filler. One said to apply the filler over bare metal and the other said to apply over primer. Thoughts?