I'm going to hit the whole thing with rustoleum clean metal primer right before I paint it. I'm keeping my bare metal covered right now with some random krylon red primer. Personally, I think that paint determines more of your initial results, and the prep determines how it looks a few years down the road.

There are really two reasons that I'm repainting my truck right now. One is that I used way too much glazing putty. If you go too thick, it will lift. The other is that I didn't fill and feather the chips in the original paint. I feel as though if I did those two things right, I would have gotten at least an extra year out of it before my OCD brain told me to paint.