I Heard Primer Holds In Water / Moisture. Im sure someone will chime in.

my car has been in primer for the last three years i can tell you unless you plan on painting shortly after its a bad idea i'm always fighting surface rust i have to re sand it down and primer again, in my opinion i would do your paint last we painted my buddy's car the worked on it and ended up repainting it because of it getting some scratches in it, or it'll be like mine and you get so busy with everything else it never gets painted

yea ive heard it promotes rusting. That would be the outcome of the retained moisture right?? Is there anything that can prevent that??

The only thing that would prevent the rusting is actual paint. We just went over a lengthy thread last week about the best way to acheive the flat look on your car.

i think so sorry im not real sure all i can tell you is to maybe put a coat of clear on it for now it'll act like a sealer, just hope you have better luck with yours then i did mine

How often do you go through all the sanding and such??
im considering just keeping the primer until i can save for a good paint job.
but that is true about the scratching. my "restoration" isnt much though. just wanna through some cragar drag wheels on there a loud exhaust and give it a tilt so its lower in the front and higher in the back. trying to get it aggressive looking.
But back to the primer, does it look smooth? is there anyway to do that, maybe wet sanding?

mainly the reason we got scratches in his is because some of the guys helping werent very careful and with the paint still kind of soft well you get the idea my car is in the garage about 90% of the time and i still get some about every 3 months and its not a very smooth look wet sanding didnt help me any with that

Does anyone have any pictures?

Why don't you just throw some cheap paint at it after priming it? I have seen single stage paint from PPG for around $80 per gallon. Its not the best paint, but it would prevent all the problems with just having primer on the car.

that might be a good idea, im planning in general to get a cheapo paint job from macco or earls schieb. im only 16 so cash is way low. at the most ill spend 1000$ on the job.

certain primers will be fine, for example if you have your car to bare metal - put an etching primer on it, this seals the metal from water/other elements. then topcoat it with a regular urethane primer.
another option would be epoxy primer which seals the metal and you can put your basecoat right on it too.

i think that you should wait till last to paint the car. i primered mine and now it gets little rust spots i thought i prepped it good too

Im 16 too, I have about $700-800 into my paint job.

sounds good
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how did it turn out??

I think it turned out good, check out my car domain for pics, link in my sig.

I'm 26 and cash is way low to me too!
I plan to look into a local paint shop that doesn't charge too much and one of their branches did decent work; rather have decent than crap work.
But as everyone seems to shime in the work from Maaco or shrieb is a toss up at times depending on the location.

if your 16 get a job and spend money like it grows on trees until you have to pay rent and buy groceries. maaco has $300 paint jobs i believe

haha i like the way eeeeefirebird thinks haha.
but yea, i think ima get one of maacos best packages and find out exactly whos gonna paint my car, then give them some extra money(under the table) to do an extra good job.

Someone mentioned epoxy primer above. That is the way to go if leaving it bare for a while......it will seal it and you can even drive it around in the rain with no problems. Etching primer will not seal the metal though, it is still porous. If you go the epoxy route though, talk with the maufacturer of the paint as some brands need to go over bare metal.

paint it with cheap implement enamel $22 a gallon

put it on thick with a bunch of hardener

when you are ready block it down with 400 and shot it with urethane clear

someone will tell you it cant be done but ask if they have ever done it before and you will not get a yes or no

just reasons why it wont work

I can show you pics of my work and yes

It works!!!

etching primer does seal the metal but it needs another primer on top of it before it can be top coated with a basecoat.

stay the hell away from maaco, a monkey with a pine bough can do much better. As far as paint goes, you can do a nice base coat clear coat job for around 500, use the shop line base (ppg) and the rubber seal clear coat, 125 a gallon at rubberseal.com, great stuff, but if you dont wanna do internet paint just use shop line clear too, a gallon of rts base coat that isnt metalic or pearl should run around 90 bucks, if you dont think pro results can come from this, check the picture of my dakota i painted up, its not really worth the time
to rattle can your car. as far as primer goes, dont skimp on this stuff, its what makes the entire job, ppg k38, the ABSOLUTE BEST YOU CAN BUY,dont buy anything else. spray everything that you plan to paint with it, around 4 coats,then take a can of cheapo flat black paint and mist some over the entire car, lighty, only enough to see its there, then you get your sanding block, sand down every area that has been primered, after you are done sanding, if you still see any misted spray bomb spots, fill them in with two part buddy putty, dont use the one part bondo stuff (or anything that says bondo for that matter) after you get all your low spots filled and your high spots knocked down, put 2 more coats of primer over everything again, the wet sand it with 400 grit and then 600, now your ready for base

you can paint directly over etching primer, ive done it before. you only do that when you have absolutley no body work needed, example freshly sand blasted fender, its somewhat tougher to cover though when you go to paint it, when ever i do that i put a coat of sealer over everthing

cool, I never actually knew you could paint directly over etching primer, and I too always throw a sealer on before my basecoat just for the extra safety.

im not afraid of painting over it, if primer surfacer will stick to it, then base and clear will, its just that it usually comes out a different color than if you put sealer on it, but if the whole car is sprayed with ething primer then there is no problem