When I bought in 1996 my car it looked good from about 30 feet away but the closer you got you could see that the silver had not stood the test of time very well. The tops of both front fenders and the hood had light surface rust where the paint had crazed. The paint right below the windows was chalky and beginning to come off.
In early 2000 I decided the car really needed to get painted or it would start to fall apart soon. I checked at local paint places and the prices for a 'decent' paint job were $2500+. I started talking to buddies of mine about renting a spray booth and one of them heard of a class at a local community collage that allowed you to bring your car in on a Saturday (12 total) and prep and paint your car. The cost of the class was about $200 bucks!
First I removed all trim, lights, and bumpers, door seals, interior door panels, drip rail trim, mirrors (temp mounted in pictures) basically everything but the windows (those come out later) and took the car to a place in town that does plastic media blasting of entire vehicles. For about $200 the entire car had the paint removed from it. I needed to do paint removal around openings and such because they tape off all of the openings. These pictures show lights and bumpers sometimes mounted because I had to drive 30 miles to the class on Saturdays and needed to be "legal".
After the body was stripped, I took it to school and filled a couple of small dents and door dings. The car required very little plastic filler. Once the body was smooth I shot a coat of sealer, then 3 coats of sandable primer.
Now the real work started. I shot a light guide coat to show low spots and started wet sanding, and wet sanded and wet sanded and wet sanded........ During all this sanding I discovered that around all the fixed glass in the rear that it was impossible to sand around the seals well, so out came the glass! This made it much easier to get a smooth surface around the glass plus I found some small amount of rust that I took care of. While the glass was out I decided to get it (and the door glass too) tinted. This way there were no edges of the tinting that showed since it went right to the edge of the glass and was hidden by the seal.
Because I had pulled all the interior panels and door seals I painted the door and tail gate jambs. Also if you notice on the turbo paint scheme that the "blackout" around the windows does not go all around the windows and the jambs. I decided to 'fix' this by painting the top portion of the door (window frame) black and paint the body (jamb) semi-gloss black also. I think this completes the look better. The spoiler, mirrors, gutter trim, door handles (not the chrome part), window trim, and bumpers also were painted matching black. The remaining portion of the jambs were painted stock 1981 silver.
After the body was finish sanded and the jambs were painted I took the car to the booth to paint. I borrowed a friends Sata HVLP gun and shot 2 coats of base followed by 3 coats of clear. I only had a couple of runs around the wheel wells (first car I ever painted) that cleaned up.
After the paint had cured for a week, I painted the black below the windows (instead of the decal) and painted lower portion of the front and rear fenders to match the rocker panel panel scheme. I then reinstalled the glass, trim and other stuff.
This was a big project that took 3 full months but I am happy with the results. My total cost was under $1000 and I think I would of had to pay close to $4-5K if I would have had someone else do everything I did.