pros's/con's painted vs. coated

Whats the goods and bads of the 2 besides prices?

The coated set will help in exhaust scavenging and reduced underhood temps. They will withstand corrosion better and if the time comes where you want to sell them, they should retain a better resale value as well.

Coated headers will last much longer. Painted headers will rust faster, coated will help keep your underhood temps. down compared to uncoated.

The coated set will help in exhaust scavenging and reduced underhood temps. They will withstand corrosion better and if the time comes where you want to sell them, they should retain a better resale value as well.

beat me to it lol

I've throughly cleaned and tried painting headers with 1200º paint then 1500-2000º fireproof paint and it will either burn off or flake off in a short time no matter how good the prep is.

So would anyone say no to a set of uncoated LT flowtech's for $145?

Painted headers will SURFACE rust faster, but coated headers will rust from the inside out. The coating holds the heat in and burns the mild steel up. Coated also get really discolored and do get rustly down in the collector area. I've seen coated headers look just as bad as painted in this aspect. I've seen a lot of used coated headers and am very unimpressed with it for corrosion resistance, but this isn't what it was designed for though. It was designed as a thermal barrier. If you want rust resistance get stainless.

I had a set of painted Hooker supercomps on my 70 for 12 years. They could have gone another couple of years but I got a newer used set from a friend for free. Yes they had surface rust, but a layer of rust acts as a protective coating from further rust. After a repaint w/VHT header paint etc, it would always burn off and look the same. I have painted Macs mids on my daily driven 00 SS and they look amazing.

Painted
pros - cheap
cons - can look bad quick

Coated
pros - look better on the primaries, lower temps
cons - costs, don't really last much if any longer.

The coated headers are coated on the inside surfaces as well. That coating keeps the heat in the exhaust gasses. My AS&M's are close to 10 years old - I bought them used 7.5 years ago. There are traces of rust on the weld spatter around the flanges, but all things condsidered, they still look decent.

I got my hooker's coated and the coating came off pretty fast.

Within a year... maybe 9 months, I had rusty collectors

It's been about two years now and about halfway up the primaries and down is nothing but solid rust.

If I could do it again, I'd get stainless. A little bit pricey, but do it right once and you won't have to do it again...

So would anyone say no to a set of uncoated LT flowtech's for $145?

Get them while they last! that is a great deal.... ;)

called the guy for the headers and said they sold the day before!!!!!!!!!

I went with a set of Pacesetter uncoated LT's on this car, and I had a set of coated Jet-Hot's on my last LT1. I bought the painted ones this time because this debate has been going on for quite a while and I wanted to try going the cheap route to see what differences I could actually see.

The painted headers do start looking terrible really fast. Give it a week and the paint is pretty much toast. Other than that, I really haven't come across any noticeable differences. There was probably a couple of HP left on the table since they don't keep the heat in the primaries and the velocity is a little lower, but you might be talking about 2-3HP at most...

Others in the thread have already touched on it. Go coated, you won't regret it.