First of all thanks for serving!!
Awesome looking truck, exactly what I'm looking to do with mine. I've been so busy lately with my stroker that I've completely negelected the body of my ram, crashing it into a guardrail when doing burnouts like the idiot that I am didn't help either!!
Now that the engine is running ok, it's time to fix up the body, your style is exactly what I was looking to do with mine even up to the racing stripes!!
I know a bit about body work but never did any of it, if you could give me a kind of step by step that would be awesome! Since I suck at paint and stuff I tried going the easy route and use the matte black car wrap vinyl, but that exercise ended up with a really expensive ball of sticky crumpled car warp vinyl thrown in anger in the corner of my workshop and me with foam on the lips from anger and frustration!
I'm guessing it goes a little like this:
- Clean the old paint
- Sand it down (what grit, wet or dry?)
- Repair any dents,... (what filler product did you use, what final grit to sand the filler down?)
- lay down primer (what type, maybe even the proportions paint/thinner/hardener?)
- sand the primer (what grits, especially the final grit you sand it with)
- lay down the matte black (blitzblack I read earlier but what proportions paint/thinner/hardener, how many coats?)
- wet sand the matte black ( if this is even necessary)
- mask out the gloss stripes (any tricks to this, where did you measure from,...)
- paint the gloss stripes (paint, proportions,...)
Lot's of questions, but my small experience with body work has learned me that small details like sanding paper grit or thinner proportions can make or break a project like this.