Hey fellas,
I admire you all and your willingness to do what it takes when working within a budget. I think this idea is great and one fella said it best with his post when he said, "what have you got to loose?" Really, if you don't have the equipment or the budget, I say do a lot of good research, plan out the job with as much dedication and effort as you can muster and then, Go For It! I hate it when people say that they can't do something. It may not be the best, but I'm of the belief that you should give it
your best.
Any full paint job worth having is probably going to cost you $5,000 or more from a good shop, and that's not to say that just because you paid $5,000 you are guaranteed a good paint job. I've seen a lot of complete $hi** come out of the shops here in Georgia. I mean total trash, sometimes for $10K or more. Research a painter and be certain of his/her abilities and business practices before you give anyone any money, and always keep them working for the next installment. I once paid a shop $3,000 up front to start a complete teardown and paint on a Nova. After a week, the car was completely disassembled and I thought, "Great work, here's another $1,000, you guys are awesome and I want this done fast, so here's some more cash to keep the motivation up!" The Nova never was worked on by that shop again, they went bankrupt and there was nothing I could do about anything.
So, I was forced to do the restore myself. I had an old paint and body guy teaching me for free as long as I did the work, and I learned what to look for and how to do a fantastic paint job. So here's some advice:
1. Don't sand down to bare metal unless your paint is flaking off down to bare metal. The very best base/primer you can get is the same factory job that is possibly 40+ years old. It aint commin' off and your new paint will stick to it brilliantly.
2. The expensive stuff is more expensive for a reason, it is always better. Buy the best that your budget will allow.
3. Patience is the absolute #1 thing to have. Light coat, allow it to dry, sand it smooth, do it again, and again, and again.
For the guy asking about layering your paint in different colors:
This is primarily done with translucent or "candy" colors. Yes, you can do it with regular colors also but the effect will not be as noticed. Look at it this way, why is gray primer used more often than black, or say red primer? Because it is easier to cover up with lighter colors. If you were painting your car silver and you were painting over black primer, you would need to paint a gazillion coats of silver in order for the darker black to not effect the lighter silver. So the bottom layers do show through. With using roll on paint however, I would not try this. Your paint layers are going to be dreadfully thick anyway, you should avoid putting on any more than needed. Here's a little impromptu video that I did for a friend about painting. The concept would be the same for roll on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QE1QgFfM_w