Any question answered...

Hammerite's black smooth metal spray is utter shite. It's like piss, barely sticks to raw metal (directions say it's to be used on bare metal, no primer), runs, takes ages to dry and flakes off. Expensive to boot. I'm now going to spray regular Halford's black primer over the top, hoping to have the corrosion protection of Hammerite and the look/finish of the regular car paint. Should have powercoated and probably will at some point down the line when this paint gets too battered to bear.

some discussion here: http://www.lfgss.com/thread96322.html

I had some acceptable results on motorbike frames and multi coloured tanks using Smoothrite spray in the late 90's (before ICI acquired Finnigans) but not since it changed to a 'more environmentally friendly' i.e. soft as sh version**.

I'm not going to say "I told you so"