I am Sooooo Confused over Paint

For what its worth, paint advice from a non-paint skilled, more engine builder type. Just did some painting, outdoors, for the first time in about 35 years. Had to buy all new paint supplies and since I've been buying stuff from Summit because they have good stock and ship fast I thought I would give them a try for paint. Painted a new glass hood for my project with the Summit brand 2k high build primer and single stage urethane. It looks like the Summit stuff is less expensive than the SPI products from what I can see. Happy with the results, more fumes than I remember from the days I used the old Centari product and was glad to have the HF $18 P95 respirator.

If you don't have anything, buy a modern low pressure gun, HVLP or something, seems like a $150 should buy one that works for a first timer; because I had it don't plan on doing too much paint I used my 40 year old Binks conventional gun with a high pressure of about 55psi.

Whatever brand paint you use I would say buy all the paint products from the same source and don't mix brands of paint and activator, etc. Buy the epoxy for the bare metal and 2k surface primer to smooth it out, pre paint surface cleaning products, gun wash solvent, fish eye remover, etc. Buy all your top-coat at once and mix the paint, (1 gallon + 1quart for a Dart?), so the whole car looks the same. You might be ok with the single stage on the underside side stuff and save some, but I imagine you would want to finish with a gallon of a few coats of clear on the exterior.

Its probably going to take more paint and cost a lot more than you think; it was about $300 for supplies to paint my hood, but I have left over from the gallons of primer and top-coat for a later deck lid project. If you follow directions and try a little practice before putting paint on the outside of your car, you can do it.