On Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:55:02 -0400, George
wrote:

mm wrote:
I don't know if this is home repair or not, but you are the best guys
to ask, and I park my car right next to my home. My apologies if this
is off topic.

If I "paint" metal with a black indelible marker, and it doesn't look
good 6 months from now, will I still be able to paint it with real
metal paint, like maybe I should do it now?????

Thanks for all the replies, especially the paint pen, Nate, but no one
answered the one question I asked, above! :-)

I'm feeling
off-sorts, and it just seems so much easier to use a marker, and
there's no chance of spilling the paint.

Details:
The imitation louvers at the rear side of my car's hood are no longer
all black. More than half of it is grey. I guess all the paint is
gone. (AFAICR, it was all fine a year or 6 months ago, but I suppose
that's unlikely.)

They are metal, and normally I would think to use metal paint, but in
this case, it seems the easiest thing to do is use a black indelible
marker, like a Sharpie. I've been using indelible markers for a lot
of things in the last few years** but none as big as this. I have
more than one brand of black marker. So I think I can match the color
and I think the finish will match fine, or I'll just do the whole
louver.

If it doesn't look good after a while, will I still be able to paint
it?????

Or this one, which is the same.

It's a 95 chrysler with hidden wipers so there is no need for real
louvers. I expect to have the car another two years.
....

Sharpies fade pretty quickly outside.

Probably true.

In the time it took you to type
your question you could have masked off the area and painted it with a
spray can.

But that's not so. I do probably have the paint, but I have to find
it among all the other paint. And the borders are curved. I have to
find newspaper, tape, drive a block away where the overspray won't get
on my meighbor's anything, mask it and spray it. I know myself. I'm
not feeling great and I'm not going to do it unless the marker would
make it harder to paint later, when it doesn't look good but hasn't
come off entirely.

Editorial
Once when I wanted to touch up the paint on my car, I went to a car
wash first. Even though I didn't pay for wax and didn't have my
headlights on, they waxed the car anyhow. I was upset because I
thought it meant I couldn't paint that day. The guy insisted the wax
was next to nothing, and though I thought that too, I still figured it
would last for 2 hours until I finished painting. I painted and the
Duplicolor paint was a perfect match to my Mariner Turquoise GM car.
30 seconds after I painted, I couldn't tell where I had painted. It
looked perfect. AFAInoticed, the scratches and nicks stayed painted
for a long time and the wax didn't mess me up at all.