to paint or not to paint

[Imperial59crown@xxxxxxx]

If I were you Steve, and I'm pretty much in the same situation you are, and even have the same car, I would go ahead with the Earl Sheib paint job now just to spruce it up a little, and then go ahead with a better paint job when money permits. My Imperial cookie jar has also dried up, and I have a compressor and auto paint spray gun which I am pretty good at, but I've never shot a whole car before, but I think I could do it with very good results, and I've been toying with the idea of doing my Imperial. After all, it's only paint, and can always be redone if you don't like it. My problem is the paint itself. They have outlawed the use of lacquer in California, so you can't buy it anywhere, and all you can get now is urethane, which is supposed to be better, but is a nightmare to work with, not to mention extremely expensive, and with the hardener can cost around $100.00 a quart! I tried spraying a friends ground effects pieces for his Supra with 
disastrous results. The urethane is very thick, and must be mixed with a hardener which makes for a lot of waste, since you can't save any left over. It also cannot be thinned like lacquer, so if you spray it on lightly you get a horrible speckled paint job, and if you spray it on thicker so it is smooth and shiny it begins to run something awful. I hated it so much that I sent my parents to the paint store where they live in Arizona to get me a quart of lacquer for the Imperial, and one for the Nissan. If anyone out there has any tips for using urethane I would appreciate them. My '59 must have been rear ended at one point in the drivers side rear, since I can tell it has been repaired, and the gap in the trunk seam is wider on that side. The repair job is fair, but not up to my exacting standards, so this is something I would also have to deal with. Someone backed into my Nissan in a parking lot a few years ago putting a small dent just below the tail light, I have sanded, refilled, and painted it about three times already, and I
 am still not satisfied with the way it looks, so I will keep doing it till I get it right. The Nissan is black which is probably the hardest color to disguise body work with. Sorry for rattling on, but I had to get that urethane thing off my chest! Bill '59 Crown