Flyingpants

I just bought a set of Boost Brothers LT's and was kicking around the idea of wrapping them. I see a lot of advertising by header companies that if you wrap their header then it voids the warranty, anyone know why that might be? I'm wondering if by keeping all the heat inside the header are they more prone to cracking or something, or maybe warping? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

NOLA26

I was wondering the same thing. Also what is the benefit of wraping the LT's? Seems to me that as long as the gas is escaping the engine is shouldn't matter if heat dissipates from the headers.

Flyingpants

One of the practical benefits of wrapping that I know of is that it will keep underhood temperatures down quite a bit supposedly. Other than that I think it looks super bad ****.

Come on guys I know there are some Brains on this forum that have the answers and experience.

Boozshey

It won't be worth it in the long run. I was thinking about doing it to my kooks, but when everything was said and done I am glad I didn't. First I wouldn't have been able to wrap each individual pipe cause the clearance just wasn't there. Second, if you think it looks bad ***, you are amonst maybe 12 other people that think the same. Everyone else will not understand what's going on and concider it to be dumb. Third, wrap will start to look like crap after a while. Fourth, you barely see any of the pipes in a stock engine bay to even notice.

BUT... I would get them jet hot sterling coated to keep the color. Even stainless will stain, rust and discolor after a while... The jet hot will help with the temp and make them visually better looking. Best of both worlds.

breathegood

Thermal wrap voids the warranty because it can lead to premature metal fatigue. It works good on mild steel and most stainless, but you don't want to be using thermal wrap in conjection with any type of coated pipes. It won't allow the coating to perform at it's best and it may also cause the coating to come off. I second the jet hot coating idea before wrapping them with thermal wrap. I would consider wrapping the midpipe as far as the cats and then the exhaust from the cats to the mufflers.

Norm Peterson

Since the wrapping amounts to a layer of insulation (being what keeps the underhood cooler), that means that more heat stays in the pipe and it stays hotter over a longer distance.

That means that the pipe will expand slightly more, and that the cyclic thermal stresses (from dead cold through starting the engine up and running it hard and cooling back down to cold again) will increase a bit.

That increases the forces at the header to head bolts (think: loosening & leaks) and the amount of bending that happens in the individual pipes, particularly if the two banks are connected with a H, Y, or X. That much I can tell you based on what I do in my day job. I'm not trying to be discouraging here, and I can't put any numbers on these things to say whether any given case might be only 10% worse, twice as bad, or even worse - simply because it so heavily depends on the specifics of the installation.

I've heard that there can be an issue with retaining moisture under the wrap (condensation, cold splashing) and accelerated corrosion, but I don't have any firsthand knowledge of this. Then again, I haven't had much in the way of durability issued with unwrapped plain carbon steel headers - I've gotten at least several years use out of each set before either they died or I swapped them out as part of a more extensive mod.


Norm

SirKnightTG

Yep, it didn't take long for my Kooks to "blue" and recently I noticed they have a little bit of rust on them. Kooks are 304 stainless so they should be ok.

marcuskeeler

yes, I can attest to this fact. We have to heat wrap the drivers side header on the [late model] race cars to avoid heat damaging wiring behind the dash and other pipe-work.
If we get two seasons from that header we are lucky, they rot like buggery inside that wrap whereas the exposed passenger side lasts forever and a day. .

Flyingpants

Thank you guys for all the insight, I think in light of what I have learned through some recent internet research and the opinions from this thread that I will not be wrapping the headers. It seems like the negatives outway the positives, I like the way it looks and that it will keep the temps down some, however, I don't like the possibility of accelerated metal fatigue or accelerated rusting and what not. Also like Boozshey said not that much pipe from the header is even visible from underhood anyways.

Fresh_GT

Thats why I was so happy to get free ceramic coating on mine while that was an option.