By far the most interesting thing I have done , our car has gotten its first coat of paint last week. It is a lot of work to sand down the old paint but well worth the reward. The car to your left was how it looked before the primer, and the car to the right is after the primer has been applied. Although it looks very smooth it is actually still rough. The next  step is to sand it down again until it is completely smooth. By the 3rd coat there should no imperfections at all, because the imperfections will be magnified when the fresh paint of coat is added. As for the new engine, we have not gotten our hands on, but hopefully will soon!