Bills vette 007

I'm in the same boat. I do not have the funds to pay someone $8 grand to paint my 74. First thing is C3 Corvettes do not have a Gel coat so no worries there. My car had been painted before I got it. It was not a very good paint job. The paint was peeling in a few spots. It was white but the VIN says it was originally Silver. I stripped my paint with razor blades. I used a simple single edge razor blade scraping tool. The paint came of with no problem but I only had one layer of paint to remove. It did no damage to the fiberglass. I did get a couple small nicks here and there, easily fixed. Once it was stripped I cleaned the car and wiped it down with pre paint solution. I can't recall what I actually used . It was recommended by the people where I bought my slicksand. I did not have any damage to speak of but a few things did not line up well. The car had a 1980's style rear fiberglass bumper. I used fiber glass to get the lines to match up. I then sprayed several coats of Slicksand on the car and block sanded it. The block sanding revealed low and high spots. I then sprayed another coat of slicksand and repeated the block sanding. Then I ran into some personal problems and had to stop. 5 years ago. The car has sat since then. I am now able to continue. I have decided to do it all myself. I have bought everything I need to paint the car. But that is not cheap either. I will spray another coat or two of Slicksand to prep for the base coat. It is not required to primer the Slicksand it will do just fine as the primer. But you may want to use a primer depending of your base coat color. Slicksand is almost a grey color so it should be fine under Silver. You need a good compressor with a 60 gal tank, air filters, water seperator, etc. A decent spray gun, and if you use Urethane paint a good paint suit with air respirator. The solvents in the Urethane are very toxic. My only worry is do I have the skill to do a good job. I don't know how many hours I have invested at this point. Maybe 100 hours. But I won't paint it until I have the body as straight as possible. I bought enough paint to be able to practice a little. The only car I ever painted was a Triumph Spitfire and I did that with spray cans. It turned out very well. Most people had no idea it was not professionally painted. I have considered trying to hire someone with experience to assist me. I am going to build a paint booth in my Garage with Plastic sheeting. So I say go for it. Do as much as you can yourself. Watch a dozen how to videos on line. Take your time and be meticulous. Good luck. If I get it done this year I plan on doing some frame work next year. It has some rust.