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Prime/Not Prime? It boils down to prep. It seems to me that the more prep you put into it the better off you'll be. Besides, I do have a lot of scale & surface rust which I need to remove, and even a few holes to treat/fill. On top of that, the fella with the Forerunner pretty much brilliantly demonstrated that a consistent bottom coat makes for a better final coat. So I will be priming before I even start the final coat.





My thoughts on priming tend to boil down to the state of the body preparation. If you have a prepped body that is showing multiple colors - a primer will definitely save work by providing you with one uniform color on the body for the subsequent paint job to be applied to. This way the whole body changes color at the same rate - with each subsequent coat of paint added.

The other benefit of the primer coat... is that it gives you 'one more chance' to get the initial surface as smooth as possible before laying on the first coat of paint.

IF the body you are working on is basically a good but dulled paint job - where you just have to give it a light scuffing prior to painting, you should be able to bypass the primer stage and start applying the thinned paint. Both Tremclad and Brightside provide anti-rust sealing when applied to beared metal.

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Two tone paint job? The original coat on my '72 Satellite is blue/light grey, and a thin chrome moulding piece to separate them. A few of the guys have managed to pull this off and I'm pretty stoked about giving it a shot. Question, tho...when you did yours, you taped off half and rolled the other half. The one guy who had the problem with his truck...I didn't see if he had prepped with primer first; I believe I can avoid the "paint peel" problem with a good, sanded smooth primer coat. I also plan to do the bottom half first, and then work on the top half. PATIENCE is the key here, and I plan to finish the bottom half, let cure for a week, move on to the top half, let cure for a week, repeat, then do the first sanding on both sides.





The one problem to watch out for when doing horizontal two tone paint jobs is GRAVITY. Meaning that the odds are that at some point the paint will run. The last thing you want is for the lower section to have just been painted - and then you go to the upper section and it runs down on to the lower section. I think it is better to always start from the upper section, do it, then do the lower section of the two tone paint job. This allows you the opportunity to fix the booboo on the lower section before adding its next coat of paint. Of course though... if you are practicing extreme patience and using a 'barely wet' roller - you won't encounter the 'running' problem and could do the dual paint job as either upper/lower or lower/upper and it won't matter.

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Rims? I've seen some discussion about doing rims in the same method. My rims are originally chrome, but I plan to have them sandblasted to remove the chrome...but I am undecided on whether to have them re-chromed ($$$) or simply prime and paint with the same light grey I'm going to put on the bottom half. Since they are Magnum 500 rims, I was also going to flat-black the segments. The conversation I read said that Rust/Tremclad of these would not be such a great idea (road damage, etc). Thoughts? Opinions?

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There are two ways to look at 'doing it yourself' rims. The one beauty of painting the rims.... is that EACH YEAR you can remove the rims and redo them cheaply and fairly easily in order to have them look their best. The main problem with 'paint your own' rims... is that the heat, chemicals, road chips etc really give that paint a beating. Personally... I would rather find a friendly rim jobber and have them professional prepare / restore them. BUT this cost a heck of a lot more then the cost of paint and time you will spend over the next ten years doing your annual 'do it yourself' rim paint job. Another thing you might consider is picking up a spare set of 'beater' rims and do your paint job on them. If you like the result... you can slap them on the car - and start doing a restoration on the original rims at your leisure over the next one year.

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Finally, I have a question that I didn't see anyone else bring up in the entire three threads. The main push in these three threads, besides PATIENCE, seems to be PRACTICE. I don't have a junkyard in my backyard to pull parts from, or even a beer fridge which needs a racing stripe...so I was wondering if I could practice on something besides metal surface. You see, I do have a sheet of plywood and I was thinking I could nail down a smooth sheet of wall paneling to it. I figure after priming it, it might be a good surface. Easy enough to remove a botched piece of panel, replace, and start over...whether horizontal or vertical.

Thoughts? Opinions?



My only thoughts on a wood panel is that it would probably absorb paint and mineral spirits... Whereas if you are painting on a metal surface, there is no penetration and what you see is what remains on the surface. The el cheapo route might be to go to a junk yard ( auto-recycler ) and tell the guys you want to practice some painting on a trunk lid. ( I say trunk lid instead of a hood simply because they are usually smaller, cheaper and easier to load in your car to take home ). Since you aren't looking for a mint condition trunk lid, you should be able to dicker one away from them for less then $20. After all... there isn't a huge market for used trunk lids on most types of vehicles. An alternative might be to drive around your neighborhood on garbage collection day and you might find something suitable being tossed out - like a metal filing cabinet, maybe a fridge door ( since by law they are not suppose to be attached to a fridge that is being thrown out etc - for the safety of dumb children that might climb in a fridge or freezer that has been tossed out ).