I'm thinking about what to paint bare metal with following rust repairs. I'd like to apply some kind of lasting anti-corrosion product to the bare metal to keep rust at bay, but I'm generally confused by the whole business of home painting...

I'm told that etch primer should be the first coating otherwise the paint may not stick properly to the bare metal.

What do other people do?

Rattle can paints are 100% no-go... they fall off real easy and are soft like paper. In my experience the 2-component paints stick on just fine if you sand the bare metal with some 240grid paper first so theres something for the paint to stick on. My whole car is painted with some super tough industrial paints so I have absolutely no knowledge of the "normal" people paints.

The rust "prevention" base coats do work but I dont see much use if you just get a tough airtight paint on top of the bare metal so it wont get any more oxygen.

I'll be using cellulose primer as it's the most suitable for home painting.

The bare metal will be treated with jenolite (phosphoric acid) to try and help, but I wondered if anything else can be put on to help.

I've been using 'Zinc 182' on my Vitesse, it seems to be doing the business at the moment! Is a tedious way to do it though, I'm using it out of a tin & brushing it on, so I have to spend lord knows how long rubbing it down, but I do make sure that I put at least a couple of nice thick coats on before I spray the top coats....

POR15 is supposed to be the business - available from Frost.

I'll be doing the inside of my arches with it very soon.

Frost list several products labelled as "POR15", do you know which particular one it is?

Chris, we're already using red oxide paint for the non-visible areas. It's good stuff, but as you say brushing it on is a limitation and I want to spray something on.

Lastly, does anyone bother with etch primer for bare metal?

I've never used an etch primer on any of the cars I've worked on in the past, & I can't say that any of the cars have suffered as a result!
I've never used red oxide on a car before, always used Zinc 182. Wouldn't exactly say that brushing it on was a 'limitation', it's just time consuming rubbing it down to get the brush marks out....
You can get Zinc 182 in rattle cans, & I'm sure that you could thin it out a bit to put it in your spray gear, but I don't have a compressor, & I can't afford lots of rattle cans!!!

That's a good point