Painting trim

Well, Saturday night I decided to pull a couple of trim pieces off of the car and give them a good scrubbing. Pulled off the cowl (what a PITA!) and a piece of the truck (metal painted piece with trim along rear window edge attached). Scrubbed them with some Meg`s #39. Didn`t do a whole lot. The cowl piece actually looked great for the section that is under the hood (not exposed to sunlight). After seing this, I bought some black trim paint on Sunday. Painted the trim attached to the metal piece. Came out great. Couple of dust spots, but I am going to smooth those out. Painted the cowl last night. Peeked in the garage this morning before going to work and the damn paint was flaking off teh cowl!! I didn`t have a chance to see how bad it really is. I didn`t do any prep other than the cleaning. I didn`t want to prime it in case it didn`t come out that great, at least it would still all be black. Should I have done more prep? I have other pieces I would like to paint if I can`t find replacements or restore them by cleaning. Any help appreciated.

well if there is any silicone, wax, water, etc... on the trim before you paint it, it will definately turn out bad. If im not mistaken, you can use rubbing alcohol to wipe the trim down before painting like that. I have done that when painting a number of wiper arms and they have turned out well.

Denatured Alcohol is actually a bit better ... wipe it on with one rag and dry it off with another ... don`t just let it air dry because you will leave whatever you are trying to remove on the paint.
Also there are products to help paint stick better to plastic ... check with a local body shop supplier.
Did you try polishing the pieces you removed ... if they are smooth and plastic many times AIO or even the SSR products will restore the finish.

Well, I pulled off all of the wrinkled/peeling paint. I am going to give it another shot in the next couple of days, time and weather permitting. What kind of sucks is, the part of the cowl that needed painting, the paint actually stuck and looks great. The part that looked fine after cleaning, it all flaked off. And now, it looks like two different color blacks. I guess this is all a learning experience!! What fun, as long as it turns out looking good in the end!