Re: 1978 Johnson, 85hp painting cowl?
Any marina selling BRP (Johnson / Evinrude) outboards can get you the correct paint.
If I spent the money on a new set of decals (and I have) I would definately get the accurate color match paint to do the job right.
As far as tips go, the rubber / plastic seal at the bottom of the cowl needs to be pulled away from the cowl just a bit while you paint otherwise it will not look good when you are finished painting. (kind of like when you paint a wall in your house with the baseboard still on, it's hard to get a nice finished look) You can slip a piece of cord in between the seal and the cowl to accomplish this. When I did the same job on my cowl I discovered that no matter how hard I tried, I could not get the aformentioned seal clean so I painted it with regular white aerosol paint.