I'm gonna paint the monster w/ the lacquer paint that comes by the quart branded by Duplicolor. It's called paint shop. There are several color choices available including solids, metallics, candies, pearls, primers and clears.
It dries super fast, comes premixed in the can (no thinner required) and costs about 22-24.00 per qt.
It is specifically formulated for DIY's, and as stated above, can be recoated at any time. Because of that, you could do a panel at a time, w/ a pretty basic, cheap HVLP HF gun, and a shop compressor. There are however just a few "little" things that require noting:
It's lacquer. You will have to wetsand and buff the paint to get the depth and final luster that most expect in an automotive finish.
It's lacquer. NOT resistant to most chemicals that are common to owning a car. That includes gas, and brake fluid( especially brake fluid)
It's lacquer. Available only in a qt can. If you plan on painting an entire car, and intend to use any color other than black, or white, you'll need to buy the paint from the same supplier (i.e jegs/summit) and specify that you want all of your qts from the same "lot" number labeled on top of the cans. For a one color paint job, I'd expect 6 qts minimum. Since it is already mixed, it's actually about half the material you'd have had you bought a single stage/base coat instead.
It's lacquer. Not the greatest UV resistance when exposed to the big orange ball in the sky as opposed to other automotive finishes.
It's lacquer. Dries fast, hard, and brittle. Rocks love this stuff, they win EVERY SINGLE TIME in the rock vs paint war. In other words, highly susceptible to rock chipping.
So you gotta be asking yourself,.......all that seems like a bad thing, why would you even consider the stuff if its likely to fade from the sun, wrinkle/craze/melt if you slosh gas on it, have to be wetsanded and buffed to look acceptable, and end up looking like hell after 1 mile behind a dump truck hauling dirt.?
All of that becomes a mute point as soon as you top coat it in a standard high solids polyurethane clear. The clear adds back the solvent, and UV resistance, the durability to survive a short exposure behind the guy haulin' dirt in front of you.
One gallon can also be bought from Jegs/Summit, along w/ the requisite activator, and reducer for about 100.00 additional dollars.
All in, you'll have about 300.00 in materials if you include some sort of primer.
Poly clear's are not w/o their own evils. The clear coat contains the isocyanates that make for a really bad case of central nervous disorder if your respirator isn't rated for it. Breathing isocyanates is bad. It's says so on the side of your super glue tube, ( no huffing Super glue) Or you can ask any dead ex-con that had to sit in the room w/ the cyanide air freshener what breathing that stuff was like.
That said, I painted my Cobra bumper last year, and chose to proceed anyway w/ only a Home Depot standard cartridge style respirator. It was a standard base clear, and it was only a bumper. The clear floats in the air and sticks to everything it lands on. You have to remember that not only do you breathe through your nose and mouth but your skin, and eyes also tend to need fresh air as well. While you can cover your nose and mouth w/ a home depot respirator, your eyes will soon remind you that they need some fresh air as well, because they'll seem "just got up" sticky as well. Despite my total disregard for my own advice, I think I'm O.K.,...I'm O.K., I'm O.K.
The pro's using the paint is since it's lacquer, and not a base coat product, the "lesser important " areas i.e under hood, trunk, interior floors, and jambs can be painted, and you're done. Unlike a base coat, where I'd
have to topcoat it.
It dries almost immediately, and the overspray usually ends up as a sweepable dust that you can sweep/blow off everything that it lands on.
So in retrospect, rolling on a gallon of rustoleum might not be so bad.