Take off everything you can, pre-mask stuff you don't want painted. Remove trim, mirrors, lights, moldings, etc. Overspray will travel several feet inside body panels and door gaps, so put masking everywhere you can see and that you don't want paint spray on. Wetsand with 400 down to good paint/primer, but not through to the base plastic. Sanding technique is critical, it's easy to sand ridges and swales into your surface. That's why I recommend wet-sanding, you can look at how light reflects on the wet surface and see low spots, finger grooves, gouges, etc.
90% of a good initial paint job is surface prep and masking, 90% is good spray technique, and with the first two not done well 90% is corrective work such as wetsanding/buffing. Also, get a good paint system, basecoat/clearcoat at a minimum, though for that price they're probably just shooting a straight cheap enamel that will begin to fade and change colors within a year or two.
How good and reliable of a paint job do you want?
I did fairly well by signing up for autobody classes at my local junior college, buying all my paints and supplies from
http://www.autobodytoolmart.com and pulling my panels off to paint everything but the roof and rear clip off the car. I spent about 400 for the base/clear urethane paint and surfacing primer plus the epoxy primer, and $500 for two semesters' worth of tuition and lab fees. We have an excellent downdraft heated paint booth and good instructors. I also painted my bike with a three-stage candy system during the same semester. I could have done it cheaper by getting all the prep done before signing up and only using one semester to paint the car and bike.
As a parting word, if you want to rattlecan something, go down to a real paint supply house such as Sherwin Williams Automotive
http://www.sherwin-automoti...Us/StoreLocator.aspx and get one of their special rattlecan systems. The can has a capsule inside, you activate it by banging it on a hard surface, then spray. Or you can order SEM Trim Black which activates with lacquer thinner and buy a basic HVLP trim gun from Harbor Freight which will work well with one of their 10 gallon compressors, then spray the parts yourself. Stuff like Krylon will start fading almost immediately and worse, once painted with that you can never repaint with any quality paint again due to chemistry mismatches. In school last semester a kid ruined his paint job because he used Krylon rattlecan primer on some spots without telling the instructor. When he started spraying the paint just wrinkled up and literally fell off everywhere that Krylon was. It was a shame, too, because he paid big money for that pearl metallic from PPG.
[This message has been edited by JazzMan (edited 02-03-2011).]
