Headers

[ford4ever]

I'm at the point of buying my headers. Can you guys give me some insite? is there a difference
between ceramic coated, ACH coated? I don't like chrome headers. I would like to get the best
coated header I can, That looks close to chrome, and easy to maintain. Any help would be great!

Thanks, Mark

 

[EX JUNK]

I got mine from Speedway and they have held up excellently for over 6 years and 15K miles.

Jim

 

[fordsbyjay]

I have Patriot headers and their coating is subpar IMHO. It did not last long before rust started showing up and it was flaking off. I googled it and read similar posts on the www from other people as well. I had them re-done by Nitro Plate and had a bunch of problems with them. They had great service and fixed the problem but it took three tries and three months. If I had to get them done AGAIN I would try a local shop where you can easily go back to if there is any problems. I wish I could recommend a better solution but I can't. My next set will polished SS if I can find them.

 

[railroad]

I have Speedway headers. They are probably 1 year old. They are holding up good, but have noticed some rust like fornation between the tubes where that all run together before the collector. I may call Speedway on this.

 

[Lee_in_KC]

I also have the Patriots, and the coating started breaking down after only a few hundred miles. Numerous rust spots in the nooks and crannies, where the coating was not well applied. I was going to send them to Nitro-Plate, but after hearing Jay's problems, maybe not.

One thing to keep in mind on the coated headers... be sure to wipe them down good with a degreaser before starting the motor for the first time. Any greasy fingerprints on the headers will get baked in... don't ask how I know.

 

[409T]

I have had ceramic coated headers from three different manufacturers, names that you all would know, and all of them have rusted. Two of those have been re-coated by Jet Hot, and have held up well. Next time I am going to simply buy bare steel and send them to Jet Hot for coating. Nevertheless, I prefer ceramic to chrome. Too much elbow grease needed to get rid of the blue.

 

[EX JUNK]

I must say that my Speedway headers show ABSOLUTELY no signs of rust anywhere.

Jim

 

[ford4ever]

You all are great! thans for all your replies. I think I will buy bare steel and take them to my local
powder coat shop. If I have any problems, I can take care of right in my home town!

Thanks again, Mark

 

[fordsbyjay]

One thing to keep in mind on the coated headers... be sure to wipe them down good with a degreaser before starting the motor for the first time. Any greasy fingerprints on the headers will get baked in... don't ask how I know.

One thing to add is that you can't leave water drops on them either or they will leave stains. At least mine did. After every wash I blow the motor and headers off with compressed air so the aluminum and headers don't get water spots. What a PITA.

 

[benT]

Fyi: most powdercoaters cannot do hi temp ceramic coatings. Its a completely different process than powdercoating. Check with local hotrodders in your area first. Our shop does both, but that is rare as you need a much higher temp oven than powdercoating as well as a large vibratory polisher (expensive!). Find a coater that specializes in these coatings and has a track record. A good one should offer a warranty for delamination or rust through for a specified period. If you have any questions feel free to ask me. Our shop has literally done thousands of headers.

 

[donsrods]

No, local powdercoaters can not do them correctly, only a few coaters who specialize in ceramic coating have the ovens that get hot enough to bake it on.

My Son Dan built his headers for his rpu and we found a place in Tampa that said they did headers all the time, so I drove them all the way up there and dropped them off. A week later I drove back and picked them up, and the guy told me something I had never heard before when I bought headers. He told me to run the car at a high idle to bake the coating on. That seemed odd, but they looked fine, so I brought them home.

We installed them and did the breakin procedure like he asked, but after a few days the coating started flaking off in spots. I called him up and he said our headers needed to get to 800 degrees to cook the coating. (I took our infared gun and the headers never got over 400 degrees ) The shop refunded our $ 180 bucks and we are going to send them to a real ceramic coater and have them redone, which is more expensive, but now we see why. Do not confuse a powder coater with a header coating company.

On the other hand, the headers on my 27 came from Sanderson over 20 years ago and the coating still looked presentable when I redid the car a few years ago, but I decided to send them to Sanderson for recoating just so they would look like new again. Not only did Sanderson recoat them, but they didn't charge me a penny and even paid the shipping ! When I told them I couldn't take that for free Nick told me they were happy to do it and to just tell people how good their service is...........so I am.

Don

PS, if you still are going to use your local powder coater to do your headers, have him put it in writing on your receipt that he will refund your money if it comes off........believe me, you are going to need it because it WILL come off.

 

[benT]

This oven is "Bertha" She may be old and not so pretty, but she'll get to 900 degrees in minutes using a flame bigger than your fist! This is the type of oven needed for Ceramic Coating - not an 450 degree electric powdercoating oven.

Some powdercoaters will use a high-temp powdercoating, but this is not a good long term header coating most are only good to 600 degrees. Real ceramic coatings have max temps from 1300 deg up to 2500 degrees. We coat about 6 different types of high temp coatings and even coat headers for 8,000 hp NHRA Top Fuel and Funny Car teams.

We have a local competitor that actually coats the headers with a similar coating to what we use but will not polish them - he hands the customer a piece of steel wool and says get to rubbing it... The polished silver ceramic headers are actually white when they come out of the 700 degree oven for an hour. To do it properly, you have to polish each header in a large vibratory polisher with ceramic media and soap for 45 minutes each to get the polished look. You can't get there with elbow grease and steel wool!

 

[railroad]

Here is an option that may be available and someone may be up on the plus's and minus's. I have a set of headers with the coating on them and other than a few scratches they are holding up good, on a nitrous motor also. I had mild steel JBA headers and took them to a local shop that did metal spraying. I had mine done in alum, they are not shiney, but frosted alum color. The shop said they could do them in brass or bronze also. They explained the process to me as the sacrifice wire is feed into a heat source and sprayed onto the metal. It has never turned blue or discolored and it will burn off anything like oil or other drippings. It is textured to the touch, not polished or shiney. I asked them to shoot as deep in all opening as they could. I need to google this and get more informed. I tried to find someone local to do another set, but had no luck.
Ditto on Ben T, do not even think about using the Speedway Ceramic coating kit. I will leave it at that.

 

[donsrods]

Ben's comments are absolutely 100% accurate. A powder coater is not set up to do headers (as we learned the hard way). Ceramic coating is a completely different process, and I can't imagine getting a job where it wasn't polished before handing it back to you. There is a reason a powder coater charges under $ 200 for this job and a good ceramic job is at least twice that amount. You get what you pay for.

Don

 

[PotvinGuy]

I had mine done by HPC in shiny aluminum. Looked good for some years, then turned a little dull. Now I just spray them with Rustoleum high temp paint. Cheap and can change colors if you get the urge. For a while I did one side in black and one side in silver, just to mess with people. But almost nobody noticed!

 

[409T]

So what's the solution for ceramic coated headers that are starting to rust?

 

[benT]

If the rust is on the surface, you can try to polish them with mothers mag polish. If the rust is from underneath, you'll have to have them recoated. The coater will burn them out and blast them to bare metal and recoat.

 

[donsrods]

I always use metal polish on mine, like the Mothers that Ben suggests. It brings back a lot of the shine and takes off spots from rain, etc.

Don

 

[iajjpop]

I have ceramic headers on my ''T]'' Been on for 10+- years, still look pretty good. While going to a car show ,following a truck that hit and killed a coon and I couldn't miss the dead animal, I run over it and some of it got on my headers{I was 3 miles from car show so I drove on in to show.] I got out of car and looked it over . Guts on headers so I got my plastic comb out and started cleaning , I didn't know what else to use and you wouldn't believe how it cleaned up with no scratchs . It was not a fun job ,but what else do you do????

 

[fordsbyjay]

We had at least two ceramic coating companies in the podunk city I live in so I am sure others out there. The one guy I talked to had polish that he gave/sold for occasional buffing. The problem I had with shipping parts was the exhaust side pipes. When they would put them in the vibrating polisher as BenT mentioned water would get trapped in the baffles. During shipping it would get out inside the wrapping and would leave water stains all over the side pipes. I used Nitro Plate over my local guy because they had a christmas special but after three months and three trips back they finally got it right I sure didn't save anything. Locally I could have been cruising next week. It was a lot more than $180 too.