Well, its getting closer to spring, and I am considering painting my first gen. heh, I have no experience with this, but I figured, the worst that could happen is i would be out several hundred dollars, and have a car that looks horrible searching around, i have gathered a bit of information. let me say first that the paint if halfway decent, original, faded in a few spots. I figured I would start off by wetsanding the entire car, getting the clearcoat off, going up to 400 or so. I planned on getting a decent spray gun, i found a hvlp one off eastwood for 250. I wanted to go with base/clear, because im sure i will make some mistakes along the way, and from what I heard its more forgiving. anyways, i havent been able to find much in the way of online tutorials on the matter, so if you guys could give me advice, maybe name some good books, that would be great. I have plenty of time, free space, and im willing to learn, so i figured I might as well give this project a shot.

 

My advice, if you want to do it yourself, is to get someone who knows what theyre doing to help you with it. I tried the do it yerself paintjob on my old sierra, and it turned out to be a disaster, the paint had some horrible runs in it, and in the end i had to get someone else fix it for me. Its not as easy as it would seem. If you do go ahead and do it solo, let me know how it turns out, hopefully much better than mine did.

 

Only thing I have ever painted were the inside of my truck doors. I made them color shifting between grean and silver with a slight bit of purple. But I made flames so the stock color were the flames a nice light blue. It's so ghetto. I don't know why I ever did it, but I did. Last time I checked there was a guy on nopistons named Eric, he painted his third gen and it came out spot on perfect. You might try over there if you have no success here.

- Steiner

 

That is a huge task you're taking on if you're planning on doing a professional job. Good luck, and be sure to post pics if you go through with it.

 

dont do it yourself, and if you do remember to include all the safety equipment as well. And I hope your neighbors dont mind. You could be out hundreds of dollars in materials as well make a huge mess of the car. I would go get a cheapy pro job rather then try it yourself.