[Techman]

The thing is whether what you paint on will stand up to heat and not smell or melt and drip down onto the works.

Where I used to work, hunting out and dealing with any Asbestos was a big thing at one time. Many items containing Asbestos had to go, and over time even though we thought that everything had been dealt with, odd items still kept cropping up in the strangest places. There was a piece of kit with a heating element in a holder mounted onto a base with a small Asbestos heat shield on this base. I had a word with the chaps in our engineering section who let me borrow a tin of their special paint for the purpose. I painted the Asbestos with this paint and it dried hard with no flaking and was heat resistant and did a perfect job. It was a long time ago and I can't remember what this product was other than it was an orange brown colour and after I'd used it I let them have the tin back.