What primer do you guys recommend for priming bare metal? I am prepping my car for paint and have been stripping it all the way down. The car has minor pits some places from surface rust so I prefer a high build and given that it will be awhile before I am ready to spray it with color I would like a sealer to prevent rust through assuming it gets wet or becomes humid again. I was at a paint shop today and a guy recommended a new product I beleive it was U-Pol or something close to that. It was a green and grey can and a gallon of it ran less than 100 bucks. He said it was made to apply to bare metal and depending on how much reducer I used it could be high build and a sealer. I am looking to paint the car myself and will probably go with a single stage factory color. Given that the car is going to be garage kept and used maybe once or twice a month at best I doubt it will see much abuse. I hate to spend big bucks on paint and primer so I am looking for a best bang for the buck primer. A similar PPG setup would run about 300 bucks but require several different primers he said. What do you guys suggest for quality thats also affordable?

I don't know about affordable but I don't think you want to cheap out on the foundation you plan to put all of the work you are about to do on top of. I use PPG epoxy on bare metal and if it's going to sit longer than 1 week I put Featherfill high build primer on it. If you do it that way you don't have to worry about adhesion problems with the epoxy and you can come back to it a couple months later if needed. Now if the car is getting wet like you say just put epoxy on it but when you come back to it you will need to scuff the epoxy and put another coat on it before you can start working. You might want to ask this question here http://www.autobody101.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=5 this is what these guys do for a living

I took my GY3 Challenger all the way to the metal when I redid it. I used PPG DP90LF on the bare metal after DA'ing it with 80 and cleaning it till nothing else would wipe off. Let that sit a few weeks, and then scuffed up the few places needing filler....and put the filler over the DP. After that, I sanded the whole car and shot it with PPG K38 primer. I did a few coats of the K38 along with guide coat till it was straight. Then I took it to the painter and said "Here...it's your turn!" I also used PPG base/clear on it. All the paint, from metal to done was about $1500. It looks as good today as it did 5 years ago when it was painted. Use some good epoxy primer of some kind on the bare metal. Some prefer etch primer under the epoxy. I have one car done with etch primer first, and the car above done just with epoxy. No problems with either paint job, so it's probably just a matter of preference. Good luck.

SPI epoxy primer. Last time I purchased it, cost was $140 for 2 gallons sprayable.The price included the shipping. awesome stuff.

DP-LF by PPG costs twice as much and is not as good

The old PPG DP made 20 years ago was great.

If you ar going to do clear coat, be sure to buy a primer for use with clear coat. Regular laquer primer will not bond wit base correctly. The guy who painted my car use laquer primer and you just have to look at the paint and it chips down to the primer. My neighbor used the same paint with primer for a clear coat paint. He is a former BMW and Lexus painter. His paint does not chip like mine. I can't aford to strip back to bare metal so I just shoot anyone who touches my car (ha!ha!)

Two paints suppliers have now mentioned using a product made by U-POL. Anyone tried this yet? The other low buck option is put out by Transtar. Thoughts? I'm trying to pick it up today so I can prime over the long weekend...

Matrix makes a good epoxy primer. Just used it as a final prime/sealer for my W350. Filled 150 grit with 2 medium coats. It sprays with alot of peel if you reduce per the directions, but reducing 4:1:2 instead of 4:1:1 made it lay down like glass. Wet sands pretty well also. I paid $125 a gallon with the hardener.