My wife is planning to replace her rusty old headers this spring but we arent sure what the best way to go stainless, chrome,ceramic coated ,or just plain and wraped.she wants them to stay looking good for a long time but every way we look at people say they rust quickly or just look like shit after a few mounths. Any suggestions?
Wrapping them, IMO, tends to hold more condensation in the pipe, causing them to rust from the inside out over a shorter period of time. I'd have to say so far ceramic coating makes 'em live longer.
Stainless is best in my experience. Ceramic coating helps a bunch, especially if your coater coats them inside and out.
I have a pair thats been coated for 15 years and no issues. I wrapped a pair and i got a blow through the other month. Its been on the bus 10 years but only got a few thousand miles on it.
Ceramic is the best way to go ,even header companies will tell you not to wrap the headers or warranty is voided.
have them jet hot coated, I just got a really hard to find one from S&S for my off topic 4 cyl, and I want them to last as long as possible, since they are gone now, no replacing them, every single person I have talked to says have them coated by jet hot, inside and out, it's reasonable too as long as you aren't going for the fancy looking coating,
Bad luck, no. SBC application stainless block huggers from Summit and made in China turn honey, gold, and blue with a good dose of heat. I had a brake drag problem and heated up the headers very well during the mile home. Bad luck later?? Hope to know after many thousands of miles.
First, how much money do you want to spend. I have had a couple of sets of ceramic coated headers, and as long as the coater uses the high temp ceramic coating on the inside (it is brown rust looking) of the pipe and then coats the outside it will last almost forever as long as take care of them. First, the very first time you fire them up the headers must be clean, if you touch them with a finger and don't clean it off, it will show. Every few months clean them with semi-aluminum polish and they will come right back to looking like they did brand new.........................if you never clean them...............they will turn brown where the head is concentrated and they will start to look dull and sometimes flake off................you need to care for ceramic just like you do paint or powder coating...............................if you don't.................it doesn't last Chrome will turn blue and look funny after a long time and flake off. Stainless steel will last forever as long as it's a good grade of stainless.............304 and 409 stainless will actually rust after some time....321 stainless is the best but more expensive and not too many people use it but it will withstand fatigue and stress better than 304 and 409.... and again if you take care of the stainless it will be fine.....................the cheaper the stainless..............the more it will change color.....the stuff made in China................well, you get what you pay for. And the same thing goes for good steel tubing, I have set on the race car that has been on the car for the past 13 years, and yes there is rust, but a little cleaning will bring them back. Here are the flathead headers I had coated by Lenard Lopez's friend in Hayward, and here is the set of race headers that are 13 years old........................again, how much will you spend???????????? The ceramic coating will set you back (coated inside and out) about $300, stainless headers..............good ones will cost you $$$$, and even good steel tube headers will cost more than the cheapy ones sold in most catalog houses............IMHO
this is great info, I got this set of S&S from a good friend of mine, who had bought them new and never installed them, I want them to last since they are now irreplacable, jet hot quoted me around 130 for a set for a 4 cyl, thats inside and outside, he asked what kind of coating I wanted and I told him I wanted to protect the headers, that quote was for a single set from an inline 4, long tube headers, so 300 is about right for a set for a v8 with two banks
Olds Vroom, 321 Stainless is used by a lot custom headers shops and they won't be cheapies like the stuff you buy from SpeedWay or some of the places that buy them from China..........I would try OBX, maybe www.spdexhaust.com in Sacramento, CA but most of their headers are custom................they do a lot of NASCAR header systems out of 321 SS.
A friend of mine just got an OBX header for an off topic car, one of the ports was wallowed out twice the size of the others, the collector megaphone looked like it was hammered together by monkeys, and it looked like a blind drunk man welded them together. It was the first one on the site for this particular car, after seeing it, ten other people canceled their orders for the same one
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