hey, so i've just finished my paint job so i thought i'd show off the results!
For your unedumacated information she is a '71 Ford Falcon. the GT version of this model is the most popular and in highest demand classic car in australia, it was the fastest four door in the world in its day. though myne isn't a GT (thankfully) i went with some GT themed stripes and boot blackouts.
here is a before


and of course here is after

more...

so now you've seen what i've done i'll tell you about how this all came about.
i'm yet another student at university who can't afford to pay someone to paint their car, but i love my car and i hate to see it detiorate, with rust taking hold and generally looking her worst.
so i'm very thankful to all of you for giving such detailed and reassuring information that persuaded me to try this.

So anyway i live in australia so we don't have tremclad or rustoleum, but some very common paints we have are two competing products, one called kill rust and one called rust guard. i decided to go with rust guard, just because i like it, have used it before and it seems to work well and holding back rust, and i also had some primer of the same brand already!

now rust guard is slightly different to rustoleum/tremclad because along with alkyd resins (30-60%) it contains epoxy esters (0-10%). i wasn't sure how much this would affect the useability of this paint so i did a test piece on an old toolbox that was rusty and badly pitted, so i thought if i could make this look good i could make anything look good! it turned out amazing so i gave it a crack on the whole car.
it was probably too small of a test piece but i just rolled with the punches and worked it out as i went along.

Another difference in this method in australia is we don't have anything called mineral spirits, but the equivalent here is what we call white spirits, and nobody uses it to thin paint!, though the paint already contains it!
the paint also contains what we call mineral turpentine which is a turpentine substitute. this is what is recommended on the tin, and what worked alright though i think it could definitely level a little better.

i should also note that we do have brightside here yes but it seemed expensive and a little harder to use as far as prep and possible fish eyes etc. and rust guard was cheap, im poor, easy decision really.

so i layed the paint on, which i thinned with penetrol, about 1L of penetrol lasted 2.5-3 litres (litres are about 101% of a quart) of paint so i guess about a 1:2 mixture. this thinned the paint a lot, and when i added any turps to the mix it got way too thin, ran and bubbled like crazy which scared the crap out of me on my first coat.

after resolving that issue the following coats layed on very nicely, with some buildup of orange peel which took hours on end to sand out. it took me 7 coats to get good coverage, then i layed down an eighth coat for luck, though i could've done more but i needed to get it on the road so i could see family for christmas.

i spray canned the stripes and other black features and learnt a valuable lesson about the tenacity of overspray! she looks pretty good atm without a final high grit sand, but i think i will skip this and just work the paint with a slightly harsher swirl remover to even her out a little once the paint has cured. atm it is about a 4-6ft paint job but should be able to bring her to a respectable level once i get around to the aforementioned compounding.

this took me about a month and a half to complete, including the prep work which involved removing the vinyl roof and welding up the door strip mount holes. the prep work definitely took the most time to get it right, but the glossiness of the paint highlighted areas i had not even been able to feel or see before. i also had to wait for rainy spells to end etc. so it ran on a little longer than expected.

i reckon you yanks and canandians have got it good, because your paint was cheap but this stuff, which is the cheapest i could find was $33 a litre (~quart) and i used more than three litres, plus about a litre and a half of penetrol at about $40 so including all materials and equipment my paint job set me back around $200. also the penetrol seemed to make the paint a lot more glossy than it is on its own! a good point to note.

good on ya if you managed to read my whole post, i hope it will help someone. feel free to ask away if i could give any help.

col