Hi guys I have a 97 f150 that I painted about 2 years ago using dupli color paint which is a lacquer based paint I'm new to painting so I figured I would just use that for my first attempt considering it's a work truck but recently did some upgrades to the truck made it nice and now I'm looking to put a urethane enamel single stage paint on the truck, my question is the prep and primer I should use I know I have to sand the truck down obviously,
What kind of primer should I use over the lacquer?
Could I paint the urethane directly over the lacquer?
Any tips or tricks you could give me would be appreciated!!

So what did you put all that Dupli-Color over?

you have a few options for going over a solvent sensitive product.
you can strip it off .
or you can if it's good condition use a product like U-POL's barcoat this tends to be one of my 1st options.
the barcoat you can spray wet on wet meaning you can spray one coat of the barcoat getting full coverage then let it flash off and go right over it with a regular primer.


you can also use many water borne primers like glasurit 176-72 we will use this over some vehicles mirrors and door handles that tend to want to lift when painting them.

just read the TDS on the products you pick

The issue is: as Darrell asked, is how much paint is on the car now? If the lacquer is the only paint, you can probably go right over it. If it was over another paint job, I'd start stripping it.
As far as I know, in my experience, lacquer isn't a sensitive finish. Back in the day, you could put any enamel over it without problems. It never had the tendency to wrinkle under most solvents. BUT, it is an air dry finish, and can be considered a bad foundation to a much stronger, catalyzed finish, like urethane. At least that seems to be the thinking today.

So we come full circle again to.....what's under the Dupli-Color????

it's not the paint that's aggressive it's the reducer .
back in the day yes you could easily go right over lacquer with a acrylic or alkyd enamels being they are low exploring not aggressive reducers.
the problem you could have with some urethane enamels is the reducers and they can be more aggressive. this is not to say all urethane enamels use a more aggressive reducer but some are.
there is also the area you live in as to what products are available from your area jobber.
the two jobbers I buy from stopped offering any lacquer products and some mail ordered places will also not ship lacquer into the state hell they won't even shop some pre paint cleaners.
if you could get a lacquer primer and use that over the areas that may need a primer great.
but if you can't your having to use a more aggressive primer that can eat into the old finish and lift it.
being so your either using barcoat or a water borne primer.
technically you could just sand the lacquer finish for top coat and hope you don't have any sand through's and have no areas that need a primer and hope nothing will lift.
or you can do the same and spray a coat of bar coat down let it flash off and go over it and not worry at all about any lifting.

But....we still need to know how much total thickness (paint jobs) is on here before he does anything.....