Crunk is correct. Ceramic is more expensive than stainless and it will cut down on the engine bay temps.

Rust is debatable, SS might rust eventually depending on what its exposed to. Still nothing wrong with it at all. I love my blue tinted ARH

 

I will have a review of my Pypes headers and off road H here by the end of next week if you can hang on til then.

 

Not trying to start a feud or anything buy how do you figure? Every Stainless Steel header I have seen is always more money then ceramic coated. I have put on and have have experience with many 304 grade stainless steel products and have yet to see any rust. Ceramic Coated on the other have I have seen alot of cases of hooker and bbk ceramic coated headers rust from the inside out. But I do agree with you that ceramic helps keep temps down.

 

$100 difference
http://www.americanmuscle.com/bbk-ch...ders-2005.html
http://www.americanmuscle.com/bbk-sh...t-ceramic.html

$140 difference
http://www.lethalperformance.com/exh...llector-p-3335
http://www.lethalperformance.com/exh...-collec-p-3336

I have never seen ceramic cheaper

 

When they ceramic coat them, are they coating stainless or mild steel? I've heard if you get ceramic coated, they use mild steel. To me, that explains why they can tend to rust from the inside, as stainless doesn't usually rust. I figure coating stainless would be very expensive. Thoughts?

 

i remember seeing somewhere when i was looking at headers for my car that it was like $150 upgrade for ceramic coating to be adding to kooks or something. that was over 1 year ago so i cant remember where.

 

do any of you guys have problems with visual inspection? currently i dont have emmissions but most likely will sometime in the future

 

I wont know until November when my reinspection is due. But when I got the car in Sept and ran it through the guy takes the mirror and throws it in and out from the car so fast ain't no way he could see the stocker exhaust anyway. Just protocol for him I'm sure. Not to mention he is probably on camera. I had just the Stinger axlebacks on at the time and got no weird vibes from the guy. In Novemember I will be going through with the long tube headers, cams and hi flow cats so we will see. Mainly all they look for here is a check engine light and test your fuel cap. I guess you could always run into some jerk that knows his stuff and decides to flag you. But for the most part here the guys look like they could care less. They want your 10 bucks and to have you in and out since they are always slammed and backed up.
There are a ton of available test stations to go to so thats always a plus.

 

yeah i dont want to get jammed up and have to put my stock manifold back on. it is easy with the x pipe cause i could always put the cats back on to retest.

 

With that setup i was making right at 310 rwhp and about the same for torque. Stock my car only dynoed 260ish horsepower with the 20x10 Black/Machined Carroll Shelby CS40s on it (same rims were on the car after the mods were done). So i gained 50ish rwhp with the headers, Comp Stage 2 NSR cams, Steeda/FRPP intake with high flow elbow and a Brenspeed dyno tune. After having parts installed the car loved to rev and would keep pulling all the way to red line, and probably would have continued to pull past 6500 rpms but i wouldn't want to do it with the stock valve train. There was only a slight change in the daily drive ability of the car, but nothing major to worry about. The only thing i would suggest is to go with 3.73 or 4.10 gears to help get the most out of the gains in the upper rpm range. My car gained a pretty decent amount throughout the power band but really showed good gains over 4500 rpms. If i had to do it over again i would, just probably would have went a little more aggressive on the cam profile (such as Comp SPR Stage 3 Cams) and installed better springs and retainers. As far as inspection goes i passed without a problem, but all they do is look under the car with a mirror and check for cats, then do the OBD2 testing, here in Nashville, TN.