Since he mentions buying it by the gallons, I'm going to guess a paint gun, Joe.

 

Actually the finish in those pics is from rattle cans... It wasnt as smooth as i wanted, nor was the coverage adequate IMO, so i dipped over what was there... Same color, even from cans, but i emptied into an HVLP gun and sprayed another coat on... Great, smooth finish and better coloring... I will post pics as soon as i get them uploaded...

 

Pics of the car, post touch-up... Done with a HVLP gun, 1.4mm tip... RDS(ready to spray dip) thinned down 15% with xylene... Same color as before...





As can be seen, with full coverage, the koi orange takes on an almost peach hue in certain lighting...

 

I like it...how about that dash? How the heck did you achieve that?

 

your paint job looks good at least from the pictures. The bottom line simply is, it takes a lot of work to prep a car for painting and hope the end result is going to be worth it. I painted mine a couple 3 or 4 years back and had about 100 hours into it all things taken into account. And then 2 years later the clear coat started coming off and now it looks as bad or if not worse than it did when I started. Gotta do it over
again. I am not sure I am going to do it in base coat/clear coat or not but probably will. I may not like the lesson learned but I now know what I did wrong o cause it and I don't think I will do it again. Single stage Acrylic works well and does not require the work to complete it that base coat/ Clear coat does.
The cost of paint be it rattle can or gallons to be sprayed is probably around the 2 to 300 dollar range now matter the method used to paint the car. I have a decent gun and a compressor but I also have used rattle cans successfully. Good luck, it looks good.

 

The pictures do not do this dip job any justice when it is clean, it looks awesome for my first ever full vehicle dip... If I were a total perfectionist, I could go over some areas with water and a piece of 2000 grit to eliminate the slight texture I have in places...You can see it in the hood pic if you look close enough... It's not 100% finished, as I plan on adding a red tinted gloss topcoat to the dip in an effort to swing the color more toward the red end of the spectrum, probably would get its perfect finish then... And you are totally correct, prep work is 99.9% of the work when painting/ dipping a car, with slightly less prep required for dip... Before the initial dip, I just went over the entire car with windex, and dipped away... My texture issue was from spray technique/ error...



I just popped out the bezel, it just comes out, and popped out the vents, they just come out, prepped it with windex, and sprayed on seven coats from a can... I went heavier than i set out to with the coats, but the result is good...

 

Very cool idea! It gives the car a kind of futuristic kind of look. Its nice that you can apply the finish with an HVLP gun. Can you polish it out? I really like the quality of the finish as is-it looks matte.

Of course, I'm still bummed over the fact that we can't shoot lacquer any more out here...I painted a bunch of cars with that, and it was pretty easy to fix my numerous errors.

 

[QUOTE=NG51;
Of course, I'm still bummed over the fact that we can't shoot lacquer any more out here...I painted a bunch of cars with that, and it was pretty easy to fix my numerous errors.[/QUOTE]

Been there done that and have the nice looking cars to prove it.
The final finish on Lacquer was the color sanding and buffing. Done correctly and easily for the most part the finish looked deep enough to sink a battle ship in but it was a lot of work.
Most of us back yard painters were not all tha skilled, but lacquer was easy enough to use, over spray went about 3 feet and was dry so getting it on something and not being able to clean up afterwords was not a problem, in many cases you could blow the paint dust off with your air hose. And making mistakes was easy enough to fix. That is now gone. But I was told that single stage acrylic enamel was as easy to paint with and less work because the shine was in the can. The problem basically was over spray. It goes as you know every where and it doesn't dry so being wet gets on things, drys and damaging stuff. I solved that for my purposes and have since used it on two cars and I agree, it is as easy to paint and once on, does not really need further work to puff it out.

 

Dip can be wet sanded, I wouldn't advise buffing too much, you might buff it off, lol... It is currently a matte finish, but as of now there is no true gloss option available... There is a glossifier product available, but it doesn't get as glossy as paint... They are working on a "super gloss" product currently, but there is not much info on it...