Originally Posted by BR3W CITY
Hey man, welcome to the jungle. I had many of the same questions when I went to do mine....I'm a balls-first logic later kind of builder, but thankfully the folks here pointed me int he right direction and then let me loose. Take a look at my build, I went through everything from having to build my own paint booth in the garage, selecting materials and tools, and the actual process and man is it rewarding. My truck doesn't have a show paint job, but EVERY single thing from stripping, bodywork, paint, details etc were done at home by 2 ppl. I'm pretty damn proud of what we managed.
I guess I consider myself a DIY success story on painting, and tho I won't be painting any Riddler-award winners, I'm more than happy saying "I know how to paint". There is soooo much to do, and so many different ways of doing it that you might get overwhelmed with good-information. Don't be deterred, take a step back and sort through it.
My suggestions to start;
If you don't have body hammer, get them, it makes ever other piece of patch work better..
If you don't have a welder, try to get access to one at least for a little, again its a must-have if you need to replace metal.
Buy a decent brand of sanding medium; I cheaped out and ended up making un-needed store trips because it would wear out.
If I had to do it again, I would consider paying the money to have the truck media blasted. Anyone with a regular job will come out ahead in the overall time-picture. Stripping is time consuming, dirty, tough on the body, and god-awefully time consuming, especially if your truck has ever-been repainted before. Besides that, you don't risk thinning the metal out too much as you might if you got aggressive with wire wheels and such. Its such a nice clean start.
Feel free to pm me, I can tell you about what we went through.
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