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Hi Paul, $62/qt? That's a ridiculous price for any acrylic enamel. I suppose it could be Delstar but I thought PPG had discontinued that in recent years (even though they still show it on their website). I have used a lot of it in the past and consider it an outstanding AE. I haven't been able to get any of it locally for quite a while because the dealers in my area are no longer maintaining the mix colors to support it. They mostly supply the autobody trades and AE has been out of favor with them for the past decade, having been taken over by basecoat/clearcoat urethane. It would not be economical for them to maintain both a high end (Delstar) and low end (OMNI MAE) mix colors in acrylic enamel. They wouldn't sell much of the Delstar. OMNI is a cost effective paint line taken over by PPG to support the low end of the automotive refinish market. Mostly for overalls and not repair work. You will not find any cross referencing between PPG's OMNI line and PPG's main line of higher end products such as Deltron, Concept, Global and Delstar, if they still market it. They are two totally separate paint lines, each with its own primers, reducers, hardeners, etc. A similar situation exists with DuPont having their "economy" line called NASON. In my opinion, if you can get Delstar you will have the best AE available (arguably better than DuPont's Centari). It will cost more than OMNI MAE. The last time I bought OMNI MAE, a year and a half ago, it was about $50 per GALLON, not including reducer or other additives. That was for orange so red would be expected to be a little more. The last time I bought Centari a couple of years ago it was about $75/gal (blue) for the basic paint (no additives). It is probably closer to $100/gal now, somewhat more for red but I would expect Delstar to be competitive with it, since they always used to be. $62/qt seems to be way out of line to me. The Kondar DZ7 is a red oxide acrylic laquer primer SURFACER. It is a single component product that does not require any isocyanate-containing additive. It would therefore be safe to use with a regular cartridge respirator mask. I haven't used any of it in many years but it is an option to avoid having to deal with the health issues of isos. DuPont has a similar product called 131S "Fill and Sand". PPG in the OMNI line also has a similar product called MP181 "1K Primer Surfacer". If you price out the products, I suspect you will find the OMNI MP181 to be significantly less expensive than the Kondar. I got a gallon of the MP181 a year and a half ago for about $29. None of these three primer-surfacers are used much any more in the auto refinishing business. Most have migrated to the two-part iso-containing urethanes for that function. However they still work OK. While they are called primer-surfacers, they are best used as surfacers and not as bare metal primers. Epoxy is a far better bare metal primer IMO. The lacquer styles are somewhat porous so if they are used as a bare metal primer, they need to be topcoated fairly soon to avoid rusting underneath if they are subjected to any wet condition without an underlying coat of epoxy. As a surfacer though, they all sand very easily. Since you are talking priming the cast parts, I really think that epoxy would be a much better choice than the Kondar. Cast surfaces are reasonably rough by nature and you are not likely to be trying to fill sandscratches as you would be on sheetmetal. In fact, the epoxy is a non-sanding primer anyway and you could go directly to your choice of topcoat. Since the Kondar is a high build surfacer, you probably would wind up sanding it anyway, depending on how smooth you applied it. Normally with a surfacer, you don't worry much about how smooth it is since it is a foregone conclusion that it will be sanded significantly. Just makes for more work that way. PPG's main line of epoxy is DPLF but it is quite expensive. The similar OMNI product, MP170 is perfectly satisfactory and should come in around $40/gal plus activator at about $14 for two qts. That's $54 for 6 sprayable quarts. The DPLF would be about three times that. Neither the DPLF nor the MP170 contain isos, even though they are two-part products. A standard cartridge respirator would be satisfactory. I normally recommend staying with a single manufacturer and a single product line for all materials on any single paint project. However, if you use the specific reducer intended for the Kondar (and not one from the OMNI line) with the Kondar you should not have a problem topcoating it with any AE, even the OMNI MAE or DuPont's Centari. Just be sure to use the OTHER specific reducer for your topcoat. In other words, don't mix and match additives. As with any lacquer type surfacer, don't pile it on too thick in one coat. Use several coats with liberal drying times in between. The tendency is always to put it on to heavily since the surface dries rapidly. You will need to spray it wet though if you are not planning on sanding it. It is very easy to apply lacquer in too dry a spray, especially if you are trying to not pile it on. That will leave you with a rather poor surface that almost HAS to be sanded prior to topcoat.  Rod
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