Here is what I've done and been using.
The first thing I laid paint on was the firewall on my 52. I was uneducated as far as paint goes and picked up a quart of Duplicolors primer, color and clear. (all $20 a can). As stated before nothing more than stir and shoot. To shoot I picked up a
hvlp gun from Harbor Freight. Seems to be the recommended gun to get it you have to buy one from HF, and can be pretty cheap if you catch it while its on sale. Air to the gun was fed from a
Craftsman 33gal air compressor. Paint came out nice for a first time laying paint. Though the paint was fine, I found out its "Old School" as someone told me on here because is lacquer. I was then pointed into the direction of what I should use, Urethane.
Did some research and came across summit racings line of paint (said to be relabeled kirker brand). So to start off I ordered a gallon of their
Epoxy Primer and a gallon of their
Epoxy Primer Catalyst which gets mixed with the primer 1:1 so it gets you 2 gallons. This time to spray I upgraded to a different gun. I came across TCPGlobal.com and bought their
spray gun set for $80, also ordered a
3M respirator and
goggles.
Paint went down very nice, and the gun (I used the 1.8 needle for the primer) worked great. I made my own paint booth outside. I bought a ezup tent, a bunch of plastic for the sides and it worked great, no complaints.
And you can't forget about sandpaper. The last time I went to carlisle a body shop vendor was there and I picked up a few rolls 180, 200 and 400 grit sandpaper, but I have ordered from TCPGlobal.com as well. I also bought a set of
Kblock sanding blocks and to help with sanding I also picked up a Kobalt DA sander from lowes along with a bunch for 180grit 6" sanding discs. I wish I would have grabbed more of the 180 grit rolls when I was at carlisle because that seemed to be a good quality paper, hardly ever clogged on me. The stuff I got from TCPGlobal, their economy line, I feel I go through more paper because it seems to clog quicker. In the long run it would be cheaper to go with the more expensive option.
For filler I went with
Evercoats Lite Weight body filler and for a skim coat to fill in any pin holes and such I used
Evercoats Glaze-It.
I will be soon be laying down summits
2k high build primer which requires their
activator and
reducer.
Because the color is alot more tempermental, I'm not going to be the one laying down the color and clear. There is a local paint shop that I am going to have do that for me, as well as go over the work I have done to make sure it is smooth.