When I was in the colision repair business, Some of the major paint companies offered a limited lifetime warranty for qualified professional painters. It was required that you used their full line and not mix brands of primer, hardners,reducers and so forth. I used Sherwin Williams at the end. Single stage urethane seems to be the most durable, even if left outside for extended periods. You can spend a small fortune on paint, necessary additives and primers. If the car is stored inside it is not a critical as to the type finish that is used. A major consideration should be that paints and primers that use an activator or isocyanate hardner is poisonous. To be safe when useing activated paints and primers is to use a painters suit with a mask that provides fresh air for breathing. It will be kind of expensive for a one time use. The easiest system for a novice home painter is either acrylic lacquer or nitro cellulose lacquer. Lacquer dries fast and doesn't get full of dust and bugs like enamel types, whether urethane or otherwise. If you get a run or other defect in lacquer, it can be sanded out and resprayed in a matter of minutes, not so with others. Acrylic lacquer is a hard finish but will not hold up well if left outside. Acrylic lacquer won't fill scratches greater than what is left by 320 sandpaper. Nitro type lacquer is softer but fills much coarser scratches. Most older painters probably sprayed lacquer type paints for years with no paint mask. The biggest problem with lacquers is finding suitable thinners. I use the slowest grade thinner that i can find with lacquers. Good usable lacquer thinner is expensive, sometimes over thirty dollars per gallon and getting very hard to find. Don't even think about thinning lacquer paints with the clean up type thinner sold at Walmart. Macs in Lockport NY. probably still has PPG acrylic lacquer. I know that they use to list almost all of the original colors but they are pricey. Hibernia restorations handles nitro type lacquer and acrylic lacquer and can custom mix the model A colors phone 973-627-1882 . Nitro cellulose lacquer is less expensive. Smart shopper, in KY is a good source for name brands and low cost paint and body supplies. phone 800-541-0399 and ask for their free catalog. I like Featherfill primer and get the freshist supply from Eastwood. Featherfill is a very high build primer that contains NO poison isocyanates and is arround sixty bucks per gallon. The hardner is included as in four tubes of peroxide as used with fiberglass resin, it fills better than any primer that I've ever used.. It ius best to use dark primer with dark colors so if it gets scratched, it won't be as obvious and it covers better. Featherfill is offered in light gray or black. There are plenty of choices, I've used lots of different brands on mine, even Rustoleum but that another story , too long to get into now.
