On Jul 18, 9:23*am, Jim Yanik wrote:

many DeLorean owners had their cars PAINTED because maintaining the SS
surface was a PITA.

IMO,the OP can go ahead and paint the SS.
a good hi-temp primer would probably be desirable for the first coat.

Paint will bond to SS just as well as any other steel.

That's an opinion that a lot of people take issue with, Jim.
Stainless is passivated and that interferes with the paint bond.
Etching is required to improve the bond, but it's still not a sure
thing. Paint simply does not adhere to stainless as well as plain
steel.

Painting Deloreans is not as easy as you think. This from the wiki
entry on the Delorean:
"Furthermore, it is exceedingly difficult to paint stainless steel due
to difficulties with paint adhesion. DeLorean envisioned that damaged
panels would simply be replaced rather than repaired;"

When you say that Delorean owners had their cars painted because
maintaining the stainless was a PITA, that's a bit off the mark. It
was the little fender benders and dings in the door that prompted
people to paint their Deloreans. It's a lot harder to straighten out
stainless (notorious for work-hardening) than to slap on some Bondo
and paint. Most owners didn't have a real choice when push came to
shove - it was a cost effectiveness decision.

Here's an article where they opted to wrap vinyl instead of painting.
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009...y-other-color/

I think the OP is barking up the wrong tree, but if he's adamant on
it, he should look into epoxy primers and a baked on finish. That
will be expensive and there's a potential for the elevated chimney
temperature doing funky things to the paint and off-gassing or
creating an odor.

R