1) Blasting: Be very very careful who blasts and with what type of media they use. May will argue this point, but I have seen the results of a bad job. Certain media can pit the metal and leave you with poor results after painting as well as problems down the road. These guys know their stuff and use a plastic media. Unfortunately it is very expensive as you lose about 20% of your media being pulverized on each vehicle job. That results in about $250 in media material right there.
2) Priming: I don't have to tell everyone about the importance of a good primer base coat. Issues like rust and good paint adhesion speak for themselves. If you plan to Line-X or Rhinoline, you will find out that the adhesion of the bed liner is only as good as the single layer betwen it and the metal. Same goes for paint. From the shops I've worked with, Epoxy Primer is the hottest ticket out there, but again expensive. You also have to add in the time to tape items off that you don't want oversprayed, etc...
The whole process will take about 5 days of work. Two to blast everything to bare metal. One day to clean and prepare the metal for spraying. One day for Primering and the last day for curing.
Total cost is $1400. Ouch yes, but I will not have to worry about a poor job being done in a couple of years. this restoration will end up having taken me 3 years if I finish by this coming spring, so I'm not going to chince on important items like this.
I will most certainly have pictures posted on my web site, probably by next weekend, when all is said and done. Then it's back on the chassi for POR Patch work and off to be Line-Xed.
