Missing my shine

I'm really wanting to get some color back on my truck, but I have some questions. I would like to go back with the original Tornado Silver, but what I'm curious to know is what is the correct base color(s) before the paint? I had the truck painted the same color once before but it didn't look anything like the orignal shade of grey when my dad orignally got the truck. Also how much paint is needed to cover all the sheet metal?

Since you are painting a medium shade color I would just spray sealer before your paint that is the same shade as a primer. Get or make a spray out card that is black on one half and white on the other. Spray your base (color paint) on top of this card with the same over lapping passes as if you were painting your truck, usually a 50% over lap will give you an even coat. Between each coat let it flash off. Keep track of how many coats you have to put on before you cant see the difference between the white half and the black half of your spray out card. This is how many coats you should do in order to acheive the color you are going for. If you are spraying a metalic I suggest spraying with a sata 3000 and a 1.4 tip for your base. This is a great gun that helps prevent moddeling in your metalics. I hope that helped.

I'm not sure what shade of sealer to put down, a grey sealer then? I have a Mac gun with a 1.4 tip on it. What is "moddeling" never heard of it, that when it tiger stripes? I haven't sprayed any color other than rustoleum solids an primers. Here's what it used to look like

You need to use a quality paint to get original results. If it has any metalic in it, cheap paints will never match, since they are cheaper for a simple reason. LARGE GRAIN METALIC, while quality paint like Chromabase will use a fine grain metalic.

For your color using Dupont procedures it should be spraying with a value shade 5 sealer/primer before basecoat is laid down. Which is a mixture of 2 different primer colors mixed to get the right shade. Now I would recommend just going with Value shade 3 primer/sealer and then chromabase color. Now you also need to ask the paint rep for any basecoat variations for that year, meaning different days at factory paint facility led to different shades slightly. If you have a panel with original color anywhere on truck, a good paint store will have a color match camera to get nearly exact shade.

Moddling/Atomization basically means spraying out the metalics correctly. Cheaper guns including MAC guns do not have good atomizaction for metalics and will create a flaked look instead of the original desired look.

Thanks for the info. What would be reccomended for puting the texture/undercoat stuff on the bottom of the fenders an rockers? I do realize for a good job you need good equipment, but holy crap the sata's are pricey. Any other guns that would do just or near as good of job, this is kinda of a hobby yet I would like it to look good too?

Is your texture completely gone on bottom? From factory they would spray a clear texture and then paint overtop of it or vice versa. 3M makes a product in a can for this, but it ain't cheap, roughly $20 sometime higher. You basically mask off area spray this stuff and wait until dry. Scuff pad this stuff and prep rest of truck for basecoat/clear and spray away like normal including basecoat over rockers.

Yeah its all gone, I scraped it off the bottom of the bed when I did the body work. The front fenders an cab I think got scraped off as well. I'm gona have to get me some of that stuff, thanks for the info on the stuff.