Dale,
you have a gem there, you have spent forever doing that bodywork, do you really want to cheap out on the paint?
painting a car is easy believe me i used to teach students at a college how to paint, we had a saying, "if you can piss, you can paint" the difficult part is knowing what to do if you have a problem like "fish eye",if this shows up STOP because there is some contaminate on the substrate or in the air like silica and until the source is found you will not get rid of it.
before you paint it you will need to wash it thoroughly twice due to contaminates in the substrate then apply a good sealer to capture those materials you used in the bodywork! this is MOST IMPORTANT, the best is Barcoat quick drying isolator from
http://www.tptools.com two quarts/liters should do the trick.
then you can paint it with a urethane base/clear from "Paint for cars", three coats of base and three coats of clearcoat
get yourself a Harbor Fright gun, not the purple one they do a better one for a little more cash.
if you are unsure you could do a test piece, get a scrap piece of metal about 1' x 1' and coat it with all the materials used on the body, then let dry for about a week, sand it with a 320 grit disc and leave for another week, wipe with degreaser or mineral spirits, then tack rag now apply the isolator just one covering coat wet, carefully nib out anY bits, do not sand the whole thing, apply the base coat and allow to flash off then the clear, allow to dry for a week then finish sand and polish, this is the same procedure for the whole car.
if it has some surface imperfections you can knock the finished surface back with an electric palm sander again from HF with a speed reducer in the line that they sell for routers, some 1500 or finer grit discs from festool, get a box and a foam backing pad from tptools.com, keep off the corners or mask them up before sanding, this should take care of any bits in the paint and any orange peel in the finish.
then you can polish it with a polisher and foam mop using a suitable compound (3M).
always wipe with degreaser and tack rag the surface between products with the tacky tack rags not the blue ones
that's it really, not much to it, you will have a top class job, i did my car with these products 4 years ago and it still looks show car good, no fade, no dullness in the gloss and resistant to stone chips ( i live on a dirt road in Arizona )
paint problems occur even to the best of us, i can give you advice on these if need be.
if you can, apply some "stone chip" to the front of the car as there is a lot of bodywork that is painted in that area, once applied, this can be sanded smooth and blended into the rest of the surface where it transitions to the top of the hood and fenders, apply this before the isolator.
try to get some "soft face additive" like used for flexible plastic bumpers for the finish coats on the front of your car as this will help stop stone chips
please oh please do not cheap out and use other products," Brightside" will oxidize and loose its gloss so will "Rustolium" and neither one will resist chips, laquer will go dull if not kept waxed and is hard to get a gloss from the gun, you will need to wet sand it and keep it polished.
lastly a word or two about technique (guncraft) spray about a clenched fist (6") away from the vehicle at right angle to the surface with 50% overlap on passes, DO NOT STOP THE GUN, apply paint to the things like wheel arch lips FIRST, paint from one side to the other ( start at the bottom of one side, go up and over the car and down the other side and finish at the bottom ), spray past the ends of the panel and flick the gun away at the end of each pass, watch your overlap on adjoining panels to avoid runs especially on corners, if you have a run, leave it till its dry DO NOT TRY TO SAND OUT A RUN, you will always rub through the paint before the run is gone, when completely dry and hard before finish sanding scrape the run away with a razor blade dragging it down the run carefully until level with the finish then finish sand and polish.
there you are, painting cars in one easy lesson.
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