I meant strip down to smooth bare, whether its metal or filler. Plenty of folks paint over filler.

My problem was that the primer that came on the new hood had a reaction with the gloss black paint the shop sprayed on. They had to scrub the whole thing down to metal, then acid-treat, then applied new primer that got along with their gloss paint. This is MAACO we're talking about here. The final job turned out extremely professional, but it took 2-3 tries.

The new fiberglass tach came to me with semi-gloss black paint from the manufacturer, and had to be sanded completelely down by hand prior to new primer and paint. Otherwise the **** thing kept bubbling up 1-2 hours after paint was applied.