The best way to paint a whole pickup

I have a 1979 Chevy 1/2 ton pickup that I am going to start on body work. I have never painted a vehicle before, (only one trailer). I was wanting to know that since I will be replacing the front fenders, the hood, the doors and part of the bed, could you paint each piece seperatly or if I should assemble the whole pick-up and paint it as a whole.

I would say you could do the body work (metal work and filler) and priming seperately but its usually best to apply the color at the same time or at least keep good notes as to the ratio of the paint so you don't get different shades. Thats what im doing. body work and primer as I go and then color all at the same time. Im doing the body work and primer at home in my paint tent I made, I plan to rent a local paint booth when I do the color.

Thanks for the reply

You said that you made your own paint tent. How do you go about doing that? Is that just made out of plastic and pretty much just hung on the walls? That's what I had planned on doing is hanging plastic on all my walls in my garage and then using that to paint.

Yeah I bought a 12'x14' easy-up tent from sears (got it for like $60 on clearence) and bought some heavy mil plastic (for $10 each I picked up 2 25'x10' rolls of 3.5mil plastic at harbor freight) and hung it for the walls, of coarse leaving one side untide so I can get in and out.

Here's a quick tip, before you paint the entire truck fit your parts, remove them, then "jam" your parts. This means basically scuff the edges, and or the inside of the parts your going to install with the color your going to paint your truck.
Then install your parts and paint the whole truck. You will come out with a cleaner looking paint job this way.

Do this also if your changing colors remove any thing you can and jam these parts then re install them and paint the truck.

Some will paint the parts inside and out then install them. In my case I can count on screwing some thing up while I'm installing a finished part, so I paint every thing after I've jammed and installed the parts.
This way I avoid scuffing a fender or hood while installing them.
here's a couple of examples of what I mean.

Fenders jammed and installed.



Hood Jammed waiting to be installed.



Lower valance jammed.



I made the stands from 2 1" 10 ft pieces steel of electrical conduit, not to hard to make.
good luck I hope this helps.