When I do a rattle can job, I use PJ-1 motorcycle frame paint, it's epoxy based and runs $10-$12 a can. One of it's primary purposes is for dirt/off road bikes so it stands up really well.

By the time you get your stripper, primer, paint, clear coat, sand paper, polishing compound, and good quality Carnuba you are pushing $100, and untold hours of prep and application time. Even then, as good as the paint is, it doesn't take the place of a properly mixed and catalyzed automotive paint that is baked on.

We seem to have stumbled across a powder coater here in the Dallas area that will strip, prep, and coat your frame for $60. We have our first brave soul who should have picked his frame up Friday evening, and I'm awaiting a report on the finished product. He said when he dropped his off, there was a guy there picking up a frame and it was the 3rd one he had brought in.

The Dupli-color touch up pens have a pretty fine tip. They are not at all like the old Testors pens with the large tips. These are actually reversible, one side has a regular touch up brush, but you can take it out, remove a small plastic cap from the bottle and reinsert back wards to get the pin head. They work surprisingly well, especially on really small dings where you don't want the bubble that a brush leaves.

I have no doubt they would be suitable for finishing lugs.

My thought is to powder coat, finish the lugs, apply decals if desired, then have a local body shop clear coat. Pretty much any painting they do will be clear coated, so doing a frame at the same time should be relatively inexpensive since it wouldn't require much in the way of prep, beings it would be fresh off of the powder job.