Firstly let me start by saying that I am not a professional spray painter. This is just what I have learnt myself. I have now sprayed 6 cars, 4 of those were Classic Celica's, I have learnt a lot along the way.

If you plan to this type of work yourself you will need an air compressor. I have an 8cfm which does the job, but probably a 10 or 12cfm is ideal as it will be able to keep up with some other air tools. You also need a spray putty gun, a good quality spray gun for the finishing coats and an appropriate face mask for spray paint fumes.

Before doing anything, make sure you read the instructions and use the suitable safety equipment.

Many people get their cars sprayed with 2-pack. This is a different process to acrylic and isn't for an amateur as you need an oven etc. In my opinion you can get very good results from acrylic and if you can do it yourself then there's no need to pay someone mega bucks for a 2-pack job. Secondly 2 pack are contain extremely dangerous chemicals and using cartridge filter will not protect you. So my advice is, DO NOT spray 2 pack at home unless you have all the right gear. If you want to know more about the dangers on 2 pack paint spraying then do a search on isocyanates which is the chemical in that type of paint.

If you're like me and have decided to change the colour of your car then you should really take the car back to bare metal to get a high quality job. Personally I want to see the same colour of the car even under door trims etc, it just wouldn't be right if you take your trim off to find its yellow and the rest of your car is blue. I have even resprayed under the roof lining again cause I want it to be perfect. But its up to the individual on how far you want to go and what end result you want.

If it’s the same colour its not such a big deal. I took mine back to metal using a super duty paint stripper. Worked great, just not so good for where there is body filler and thankfully there wasn't much in my Celica. Personally I don't like sand blasting. If I was going to get it done by someone else I would get it acid dipped instead of blasting.

If your Celica has rust, then it will have to be cut out, replaced or repaired in some way.

I'm not gonna go into too much detail about panel beating, but basically its a matter of buying a set of panel beating hammers and using them to reshape the damaged panel to its original shape or at least very close to it. It's a time consuming process, but you only get out what you put it unfortunately.

Once the rust is gone and the panels are straight (or close to it) then the first step is to use bodyfiller to remove any minor imperfections on your panels.

My car has been sitting around for a while in bare metal and minor surface rust has started to form. So firstly I treated this with a metal conditioner before using any primer or body filler. I used a phosphoric acid based conditioner that literally dissolves any rust and returns the metal to a nice clean and etched surface. Light surface rust is easily removed by the use of this conditioner and a scourer. Read the instructions, that’s the main thing because each product is slightly different.

For heavier surface rust I let the solution work for a few hours before cleaning off. I keep applying more solution until I got back to clean metal.

If the metal is already clean or recently stripped then you can apply 1K etch primer straight onto it. I like PPG paint products, so everything I use is from PPG. I usually spray around 2 coats of etch primer.

I like to apply body filler straight onto bare metal. After its been applied and sanded then I touch up any bare metal areas with etch primer. It's best to avoid spraying etch primer on top of body filler. A little bit of overspray is ok.

Once the bodyfilling is done and the bare metal has been etch primed, I then apply a PPG lacquer based "spray filler" over the whole car. The body needs to be pretty straight by the time you get to this stage, as the spray filler should only be used to cover minor imperfections such as stratches or very minor dents. This same filler can be used as a primer simply by thinning it out more.

At this stage I apply a dust coat of any contrasting colour so that I can see any imperfections or scratches.

From here it’s a matter of spending a fair amount of time sanding and refilling if necessary until the body is perfectly straight. Any faults need to be fixed at this stage. Don't be fooled, scratches cannot be covered by the top coats. The top coats simply magnify any fault you leave behind at this stage.

The coarsest paper I use for sanding spray filler is 400 and I keep on sanding until I get down to using 1000 or 1500 paper. Coarser paper than 400 will make it very difficult to get all the sanding scratches out. I do all sanding wet, making sure that the film is kept wet at all times.

OK, now its time to have some fun. The car needs to be masked up for the last time. Unfortunately a good paint job is about 95% preparation and about 5% actual spray painting.

Once the car is masked, make sure all surfaces are clean and dust free. The use of a "tak rag" will help remove dust particles. Also a mild cleaning solution can be used on the prepared body to be sure that it is free of oil, dirt etc.

I find that a siphon feed spray gun works well with acrylic, however a gravity fed gun will do just as well. I like using a 2mm spray tip as this is a good size for spraying acrylic lacquers. I have always used an Iwata gun, but cheaper guns will probably do a good job as well.

If you want a good job, you must not spray paint in direct sunlight or at temperatures below around 16 C. Ideally I like to paint when its about 20 to 24 degrees C.

I'm spraying a pearl type colour so I only try to apply enough paint to get good coverage. Anything over that is unnecessary because it's going to be top coated with clear. In this case I sprayed about 4 coats of the dark blue. You only need to wait around 5 minutes between coats.

Once the colour is on, it's time to get the gloss happening by using a clearcoat. I spray about 4 or 5 coats of clear as this will eventually be fine sanded and buffed. I apply the clear within 10 or 15 minutes of finishing the colour coats.

I like to leave it to set for at least 2 weeks before I do anymore. It's best to leave it as long as possible to allow the paint to cure properly.