Sorry for the delay, I found out last week that I had stomach cancer! Good news is that they removed the tumor and it sounds like I may be good to go once I heel up from the surgery. Closest thing to getting hit by a truck I've ever had.
For your questions from above, I know I am going back to FE5 Rally red but not sure on the stripe quite yet. They did use a brown compound called star-blast on the bottom, a little rougher surface but for the bottom it should be fine. There was very little rust on the entire car, the only rust that it had was behind the drivers quarter maybe the size of an ink pen the rest including bottom & trunk pans were rock solid! My health will probably slow the project down a bit but at least it sounds like I will be around to finish the car!
I'm adding an additional pic of the drivers side while we were blasting, you can see the rust behind the drivers quarter but that was it.
Mike