[Savarak]

I just heard of this from a friend's friend who had it done to his M3... is this really beneficial to do for our cars?

[WRXGuyInUSA]

Apparently, it does help with the thermal dynamics of any turbo-charged car... so there's no cooling or (shrinking) of exhaust gas before it hits the turbo, while also reducing expansion/wear on the exhaust...

Efficiency may increase, but other than that maybe somebody else knows a better reason?

[kts262]

Coating the exhaust manifold/header offers a lot of benefits. It keeps the exhaust gasses hotter so they flow faster which helps with turbo spool. It also keeps the engine bay cooler since the heat is kept inside the manifold. This keeps the intercooler cooler, and well the entire engine bay which helps with power. It also looks a lot better then heat wrap and won't run the risk of having oil/gas seep into the wrap which could cause a fire.

Don't expect a TON of gains, but it will help the car a bit.

You also need to make sure that a coating is done properly, there is a lot of prep work that goes into the part before it's coated. If that's not done properly then the coating can come off. It's happened to me. JetHot however has been doing coatings for a long time and they do it right, I haven't seen anyone have an issue with their coatings.

[mattjk]

yes!!! keeps the heat in where it is needed the most. also keeps the underhood cooler.

i try to get all my exhaust parts coated.

i would not recommend jethot, they are expensive and I've seen lot's of header flake off.

sermatech in california is the best i've tried. $120 for a "lot" charge. basically send them everything you want coated for $120.

[Savarak]

120 for "lot" at sermatech sounds like a good deal... but that would involve taking my car apart and waiting a lot, wouldn't it? (well it'd be the same for any coating)... thanks for the responses

[bradze]

i had my headers coated and loved it. better than heat wrapping em, just more expensive. only downside

[caveguru]

What are the typical exhaust temperatures in the headers? I see that Jet-Hot has two grades of coating- Extreme and 2000. Extreme is good up to 1700F, while 2000 is good up to 2400F, but doesn't work as well at temperatures below 1700F. Which should I use?

Also, Jet-Hot's price for one header was over 200. ugh.

Frank

[Endymion]

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I don't believe many (if any) of us see exhaust temperatures in excess of 1700F.

As for choosing between the two, I would suggest going with the "Extreme" option. I actually have a set of JetHot coated headers, and I will say that I definitely have mixed feelings about JetHot.

Their turnaround was pretty quick; roughly 4 weeks door-to-door for headers, up-pipe and downpipe. I immediately inspected the finished product. The downpipe came out very well. The up-pipe didn't receive a full coating - I could actually see the stainless peeking through at some points. The headers came out well, but there was some sort of brown, viscous residue all over them. I contacted the folks at JetHot about it immediately and they had me send them pictures of the headers and up-pipe so they could get a better understanding of what I was trying to describe.

Long story short, JetHot offered to have the parts be picked up at my house, fixed, and shipped back to my front door for the perfect price of free.

So, I guess what I'm getting at is that even though their initial product wasn't top-notch, their customer service was very helpful and they definitely took care of the problem in the best manner they could. It was more of a quality control issue than anything else, considering I've had the coated parts on my car for about 9 months now and they show no signs of chipping/flaking.

Alternatively, Swaintech also does ceramic coating and I have yet to hear one bad thing about their work.

[mofoSTI]

Helps with spool. wraping also traps moisture and can rust over time.

[Turninconcepts.com]

Originally Posted by mofoSTI

Helps with spool. wraping also traps moisture and can rust over time.

incorrect wrapping can also cause undue fatigue on the parts that were/are already stressed such as welds. That's why you want to leave a small air gap between the end of the wrap and anything like that.

My thoughts on coating are this:

It is a good thing. BUT some places will try and sell you coating on both the inside and out. I choose NOT to coat the insides of pipes due to flaking problems. If it was an NA car, sure, not problem (because chances are it would be catless anyway), but on turbo'd cars theres that pesky hair dryer in line with the exhaust.