From one noob to another. If your goal is to sell it, then don’t ruin it with a crappy paint job. I can’t tell if you have already done the bodywork or not on that quarter. My advice would be as mentioned before: get it as straight as possible and shoot with primer. Primer coat is forgiving and the next buyer will look at the car and say “I can get a $1000 paint job and this will look awesome”. Now maybe he can or maybe he can’t but....

Don't mix topcoat white with primer. The paints are completely different with the primer being very high in solids content to fill imperfections and be able to be sanded easily while the topcoat is low in solids content and sets much harder. Depending on brand, they may be chemically different as well - some need completely different activators.

As mentioned before, mixing white with a blue metallic will just muddy it. If you were game enough you could use the white as a groundcoat with the blue over the top - a bit like a 3 layer. Might take some experimenting to get the right finish and maybe you don't have the experience to be able to maintain an even top layer.

Just get the right paint for the job and do it correctly. As also said above, a bad paint job will hurt the value of the car much more than the cost of the correct paints.

Last time I bought all the Paint I needed for a Project JUST Paint! I was out almost $1500 that was mid grade products not even top of the line stuff!
But it was epoxy Primer, Regular Primer, color nothing fancy and some Clear and sand paper and a lill bit of reducer but no tape, no filler, no masking stuff, no laq. Thinner.

Have you painted before?

Looks like you have more body prep work to get through.

If you haven't done much painting, I'd suggest getting a little more practice in with a few smaller projects.

you've got A LOT of good information here. you need to make a decision on what your going to do, are you going to keep it or sell it ?
Jay D.

What kind of money are you looking to get out of this Park Avenue as is? and then when painted???

You say you have a compressor and wanna use the Harbor freight Purple gun, The Purple gun isnt the problem the Size or CFM out put of your compressor is! The Purple gun is a known air hog requiring more CFM than most economical small home compressors can produce. I am not talking about PSI of the compressor!

There are other guns not well known guns that require less CFM and still produce acceptable finishes.

https://www.autobody101.com/content/art ... ould-know/

To the OP, so these probably are not the answers that you were hoping for.

But the answers that you are getting are from combined years and years of experience that these guys have and are willing to share. And that is a very key point.

If you want to get into the hobby, this is the place. If you are looking to get confirmation that a newbie will be able to bang out a sub-$500 show quality overall paint job, then you are going to get many responses explaining that your assumptions are wrong. Like the dentist told me "Sometimes the tooth hurts" (get it? tooth, truth? ok, not so funny)

You got ten years into this car? Put in the work and a LOT of time and you can have a pretty darn good paint job.

And of course save some money to have the bumpers rechromed, stainless trim polished etc etc etc. Typical car restoration, spend $60k and end up with a $25k car. Sometimes you are ahead by just walking away.

I guess I should have been more clear. I do have some experience with paint and body work. There is FOR SURE more prep to do. Blocking, mostly at this point. I am not in any rush. I understand that most of the work is prep. I’m still a couple weeks away from painting. I’m pretty proud of how this area is getting close. Understand that there was a huge rust hole there and I had to build that with bondo and fiberglass. If anybody ever does a proper resto on this thing, they will find a Bud Light can I put in there to help me get the right curve.

There’s still plenty of areas where someone in the past has done even worse paint and bodywork than me. It almost looks like they painted it with a brush in some areas. Sure, in a perfect world we would go down to bare metal and replace the rusted panels with a rust free donor. I get it. This car, even with it’s rust and not having the original engine, deserves a proper paint job. I get it guys. But it wont be wrecked by my noobish level paint and body work. I’ll at least get some good pictures of it, and if I can only get $8500 for the car, thats a lot more than I can get for it right now.

Note: A lot of this area is covered by things like trim and a tail-light. Also notice I sanded a small hole there where I got into the glass, that area will not show, but I need to make sure the trim piece fits.

So, I am thinking, I am going to go ahead and mix the white with the primer at 1:1. There’s a few reasons for this. Mostly is I want the primer layer to be as light as possible and 2, there are lots of areas to prime and I think I will use a full gallon. I may even have to rattle can some areas that are under the trunk, for instance. Also, I think it will give the primer a little extra hardness and slickness. I read on Summit that they suggest mixing some of your base color with the primer, but I understand why that is a bad idea with metallic. Are we in agreement that this is OK?

I guess, the way I am looking at it, I am going to shoot it, doors open, trunk open, first, let that dry quick, close doors and trunk, shoot the outside.

I plan to do all this in primer, and then I will have a better idea of the job, pretty much doing the same thing, a day or two later but with paint, after sanding and detail work, try and get a nice flat coat, even if it’s thin, I want the color to be light.

I saw a guy on youtube “make” single stage by mixing base and clear. Made me go hmmm.