What is the best choice for exterior paint?

[Suemel1]

Hi Ya'll... I haven't posted for quite a while, we have been busting out the detail work on our bus. We were also waylaid a bit by the freezing temps of mother nature. Now we are in crunch time to get the bus off this terribly expensive commercial insurance and the last step is paint. Can anyone offer advice or opinions on what they used and liked or didn't like? I have been looking at automotive paint vs tractor paint. We will spray it on. Our issue is needing a fairly fast dry/cure time. We have lots of shedding trees around and don't have the ability to move it elsewhere while we paint. I've read reviews on the Rustoleum Implement paint that it was soft for 4 weeks after application (not on a bus). Yuck! I will take any input you all have! We also bought those ceramic microbeads to add to the roof paint for heat reflection. Thanks in advance everyone!

[EastCoastCB]

Originally Posted by Suemel1

Hi Ya'll... I haven't posted for quite a while, we have been busting out the detail work on our bus. We were also waylaid a bit by the freezing temps of mother nature. Now we are in crunch time to get the bus off this terribly expensive commercial insurance and the last step is paint. Can anyone offer advice or opinions on what they used and liked or didn't like? I have been looking at automotive paint vs tractor paint. We will spray it on. Our issue is needing a fairly fast dry/cure time. We have lots of shedding trees around and don't have the ability to move it elsewhere while we paint. I've read reviews on the Rustoleum Implement paint that it was soft for 4 weeks after application (not on a bus). Yuck! I will take any input you all have! We also bought those ceramic microbeads to add to the roof paint for heat reflection. Thanks in advance everyone!

Tractor/implement paint is the exact same thing as Rustoleum. Oil based enamels. You can use a hardener with them. If going the oil based route, I'd just get whatever is the cheapest and add the hardener.

[Tango]

For what should be obvious reasons, automotive paint is best engineered for the task. Then come old school enamels with a little hardener added in. Then plain enamels. Whatever you do...do not allow anyone to apply water based primer or paint. Even the "new" wonder crap that the factories are using. The genius that decided that spraying water on bare steel was a neat idea needs to be tarred & feathered.