sublimaze

i was set on buying coated headers/midpipe and talked to my speedshop owner about the install. he said thermal coating was unnecessary and that it was a marketing ploy. the speedshop has been around for years, and he has worked on my car before, so i trust him.

i thought coated exhaust would be beneficial, especially for a supercharged car. is it worth the extra cash?

1991LX5.0

if your talking about jet hot coating the exhaust on an N/A car its completley not worth it. Really the only way that is needed is when your generating extrmley hot exhaust like on turbo cars. But if your talking about like ceramic coated headers that can be worth it depending on price, it will help keep the heat in and its the only coating that will still look good years down the road

GreyStang

Are you talking about thermal coating the headers to keep them looking nice? Or to reduce underhood temperatures?

sublimaze

i meant for reducing underhood temp. s/c power output is particularly sensitive to heat, so anything that reduces engine bay temp should help optimize power output, right? i'm also installing a smaller blower pulley, which will increase intake charge temp even more

tx03v6

so I'm unable to make a submission in the poll. Personally I think the difference would be minimal at best. A quality coating put on something that was properly prepped, and put on properly can keep them looking good longer, however you gotta remember there is also the inside of the pipe to consider. I spoke to a local guy who does the coatings and he will tell you real quick there is no way to effectively coat the inside of headers, prepping a complete header and getting a good even coat on the inside is next to impossible. So you will still get corrosion on the inside which will work its way through the pipe.

For performance I would think a quality header wrap would do just as good when it comes to keeping underhood temps down. The point of the stuff is to keep the heat in the exhaust until it's farther from the engine. Until someone shows me real world temp differences on the same engien for a coated vs uncoated header I can't see it being worth the extra money. I will say this could be done very easliy with a laser thermometer on an engine dyno using the same engine. Run the engine under load for x amount of time and measure the pipe temp and specific points around the headers, (each head pipe, the collector and any other point for instance). Then do the same thing for an uncoated/painted set.

Unfortunately with so many players in this "ceramic coating" game now it's tough to tell what is what. Some places double and triple coat and some only put on one coat and that can also make a difference.

I think in the end it comes down to preferece, I like shiney stuff
My wallet tells me that painted will likely be just fine though

Now if you are running some highly modified motor with high boost or some crazy rpms I would imagine all that stuff goes out the window, you need to worry more about ensuring your car's cooling system can handle the work than relying on some exhaust coating.

sublimaze

thx for the info. i might skip the pipe coating and put that money towards a larger heat exchanger or methanol injection