I am about to start painting my own car Sunday with a HVLP gun. I have done extensive research on prepping and painting as well as doing a little bit of body work on other vehicles. I decided to go with a single stage paint from nason, because this is my first time painting and I wanted something fairly simple and cheap to spray on yet look pretty decent. I am painting my 95 dx coupe black, which is its stock color. I have a few questions which I can't seem to anywhere in regard to single stage paint. I am familiar with wetsanding a car after the clearcoat has dried to give it that nice glass look but can you do that with a single stage? What would be the optimal amount of reducer and hardner to add to a single stage to give the least amount of orange peel? And from what I am understanding, 600 grit should be the last grit you sand with before spraying the car? I am curious how this will turn out, I should fare pretty well as long as I am meticulous about the prep work. Anything would look better than it does right now, It is currently almost faded to white!

 

600-800 before spraying is fine.

Single stage can be sanded the same way as base/clear. The only single stage paint I would not wet sand and buff too much is single stage colors with metallic. Once you start sanding on metallic colors it is very easy to "cut" some of the metallic out of areas which would make it appear a different color.

Just get a black without alot of metallics and you will be fine. Make sure to post pics!

You can always check out autobody101.com as well, lots of useful info there.