Has anyone ever powder coated their exhaust manifolds (flathead) and if so, how well did it hold up? Thanks Tom
cant powder coat exhaust manifolds gets way to hot powder coat cures i beleive at 350 deg or 450 deg i cant remember but you manifolds acheive a temps well beyond that so it would just melt off i have seen guys powder coat motorcycle engine side cases so maybe you could do the engine block ceramic coating works well on exhaust but is kinda high rent just my 2 cents
Correct, powder coat has a operating temp of 250 degrees, and high temp powder around 900 degrees. Neither of which will hold up on exhaust manifolds/headers You will need to have them ceramic coated, some powder coaters ceramic coat as well
There are powders that are supposed to be hi-temp. Eastwood sells them, as well as others, I'm sure. I have tried them on several cars. If the cars are stored inside, and not driven to excess (yeah, I know, then why bother!) it holds up "OK". I leave my 50 Ford PU outside, and it didn't last a year! So do something different if driven a lot or stored outside. Maybe plating, or some sort of true Hot Coating.
Ceramic coating, applied by a powder coating shop, is the answer. It's applied in the same manner, then put in essentially a large rock tumbler to polish it, inside and out. I've been doing it for years, wouldn't do anything else. I've even stripped chrome off of parts and had them ceramic'd I like it so much. Not cheap, nothing good is...it runs me about 200 bucks to do a full set of headers. Factory manifolds might be a bit cheaper.
Regular powder coating is not right for exhaust manifolds, ceramic hi temp material is quite durable. I have powder coated the inside of exhaust tips and it held up fine at that juncture. Here is a set o headers ceramic coated almost two years ago and driven 10,000 miles.
We had the headers for our flathead ceramic coated. This is how they looked when new: This next photo doesn't really show it too well, but 5 years and several thousand miles later they look like this: Not as good as when they were new, but still nice. They're pretty easy to keep clean and they won't turn blue. The cost was $299.00 which is certainly more than a couple of cans of VHT, but the durability can't be compared.
tom, i did my headers on my model A with eastwoods hi temp powder coat. cast iron maybe is differnt, but i'm happy with them
I built a 1934 Caddy & my customer had the exhaust manifolds coated with a high temp semi gloss black coating and it was top shelf, durable and way way cheaper than having the OEM type coating which I think may have been porcelain .
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