First time painter shoping list?

A decent dryer and regulator. Air hose. Fittings. Air blower nozzle. Decent gravity fed primer and paint gun. I bought my primer guns and paint guns from eastwoods. Basic primer guns are cheap 30 bucks and seem to behave reliably, so does my paint gun I got from them for 200. I am sure there are many better ones than eastwood's but I had some store credit.

Remove all tar, gummy tar based crap, oily substances and loose material. Cleanliness and oil free is the most important thing for paint sticking. Sanded and rust removal is second to cleanliness.

I normally use lots of denatured alcohol (use in low humidity environment as alcohol absorbs moisture) for bulk cleaning and low VOC laquer thinner for final degrease. Then the tack cloth.

The seam sealer and tar that seals the seams you shouldnt have to remove unless it is dry and comming off in chunks. Then I would get rid of it and put new urethane seam sealer in there after super cleaning the seams.

There are some excellent painters on this forum, hopefully they will chime in.

I would recommend a 2 part epoxy thinned with the correct thinner (for sealing and excellent adhesion) and then painted the correct car color with single stage (no clear coat needed) for the inside and less essential places like under hood or under side.

southern polyurethanes makes excellent epoxy which can go over about any sanded and prepared surface or bare metal and TCP global makes a broad number of colors in single stage.

Otherwise, just prepare by sanding / wire wheel it then degrease super clean and use rustoleum or x-o rust like others recommend.

I removed all the seam sealer and all the paint from the inside of my other duster with a couple wire wheels on a 20 dollar harbor freight right angle grinder (gloves and eye protection or risk major potential for injury and cover delicate items such as glass and appolstery). Then just degreased really well and it and it was ready for bare metal primer.