Personally I prefer paint over vans powder coat. Several of my powder coated parts chipped and exposed large areas of rust underneath and I am not even flying yet. Prep with Ospho, epoxy prime and topcoat with whatever. A lot easier to touch up or sand blast off if you ever need to. I work in the railing business and deal with wet applied paint with chemical prep and powder coat. The wet paint far surpasses the powder coat in corrosion resistance. And yes, I actually remade those same pushrods and painted them.