$50 paint job comments...

For those who are curious about this...

I did 4 coats on the hood. Wet sanded wtih 600 grit after coats 2 and 4. Unfortunately I had a fair amount of orange peel at that point; really no worse than my stock GM paint on the '97 Formula, but it bothered me. 400 grit wet didn't suffice to smooth it out, so I ended up going to town with 320 dry, then 400 wet and 600 wet. The end result is smooth and the reflections are nice and sharp instead of all uneven and orange peel-y. Unfortunately I effectively sanded off two coats to get back to a smooth surface, so I have some more work to do.

I think where I went wrong was not thinning the paint sufficiently. It really needs to be at almost water-like consistency when applying.

But, this is definitely a do-able thing. I bet that once I get all the coats on and lay them down thin enough I will need to do much less sanding to get a good quality end product.

There's my $.02 so far for those interested in the progress.

 

I am taking pics, will probably post a more comprehensive writeup once the hood is done... it's my 'test piece' since it has a large flat area and will definitely uncover any flaws in the process.

Pretty fun learning body work. Repaired a couple cracks in the grille and it turned out very nicely. Next up is working a slide hammer to yank a large dent out of the fender followed by bondoing and prepping that area.

 

Making progress... the spill on the bumper is from wetsanding, not overpainting. I'll repaint the bumpers anyway, so not too worried.

 

No clear is really needed with this paint, but some people on the Mopar board are experimenting with it to see what the results are like.

 

Nope, just came across a link to it from some other car site. It's where the $50 paint job discussion started, and has like 50 pages of it.