If I had it to do again, I would not use primer. My reason is that when I'm wet sanding, if I sand down too far, I'll have primer showing. I would rather have my first coat of paint showing through than primer (which is a different color). It's like you're wasting your time with those first one or two coats of primer, because they'll show through the same as bare metal would.

Anyway, I took a picture of the problem I have been having with my Rustoleum Gloss White beading up on me (see below). Yu can see the factory paint showing through, it's a metallic light blue. And yes, I sanded off the factory clearcoat before painting. Paint is thinned out to about 50-50 paint to mineral spirits.

It goes on smooth enough, but rather than "leveling out" as it's supposed to do, it does the exact opposite and beads up, resulting in terrible orange peel, no matter how smooth the surface is that the paint is applied to. It's especially bad in areas I need it most, namely places where I sanded through to the factory paint.

So I would really like to see this "leveling out" phenomenon, but have yet to experience it. Needless to say, I have had to do a ton of wet sanding after every two coats, due to the orange peel, and over and over again wind up sanding all the way through to the factory paint, especially in rough areas and on drips (which I have learned to avoid at all costs).

So has anyone else experienced this beading up behavior on every single coat like I have? It's extremely frustrating. BTW, the area shown is a close-up taken near my door handle, and the patch that's showing through is about 2 inches long by about 3/4th's of an inch wide.