Any of you running uncoated headers?
What's it like? I know they rust fast, but do they usually last a long time?

 

Mine are uncoated

 

The reason why i ask...I bought uncoated longtube pacesetter and now i'm friggin worried
that they're not gonna last.

 

I know this sounds crazy, but you can take them off and have them
coated. Anyway, the longevity of non-stainless headers depends on
where you live and its year-round weather conditions.

 

I live in a very cold climate. But, my car is only driven in summer months.

 

Give them a good paint job, I have heard good things about the POR15 paint. I have coated headers and they started rusting in less then a years time. If I were to do it over, I would have either saved more money and bought the Kooks or I would have just gone with uncoated headers and painted them with a quality header paint.

 

Cost me $280 to have my 69 Camaro headers coated... so you might be better off selling the set you have and getting a set of coated ones? The only reason I went that route was because we had the headers in front of us and they had stood the test of time for 25+ years.

 

if you look around you may be able to find somewhere cheaper to coat them. Ive read about guys paying 150.

 

don't bother getting them coated.

coatings are worthless imo.

most coatings rust off. I dont think i've ever seen a mild steel header not rusty from halfway down the primaries (i'm talking about longtubes of course). I've dealt with a lot of different coatings, and they all pretty much suck. Most mainline tuners prefer uncoated headers anyways, because the coatings help with detonation (or false detonation or somethign of that sort).

IMO there are two ways to go

uncoated mild steel headers for budget minded people

uncoated stainless headers for the serious folks.

if you are even thinking of dishing out the money for a set of coated headers, just get a set of stainless ones. YOU WILL BE A LOT HAPPIER IN THE LONG RUN!!

 

They were coated black when i got them. I know the black coating is there so they don't rust during shipping. Would it matter if i only drive my car in the summer months?
She's parked in a warm cozy garage during the winter season.

 

Odd.... my HPC coated AS&M's are 11 years old and only beginning to show the first signs of rust, mostly at the flanges and where there is weld spatter. I wouldn't consider an uncoated header.

"Coatings help with detonation"... not even sure WTF you are attempting to say... coatings help cause detonation? Again, I better tell the guys that built my engine that they probably could have sprayed more than the 300-shot without worring about detonation if I had not been stupid and used coated headers.

 

how many miles do you put on your car per year?
I had a factory hooker coating on my hooker long tube headers, and they didnt last all but 6 months before they were half rusted. That's in Kentucky weather, so no salt, barely any snow. My ORY had a jet hot coating on it. that lasted a year, before the coating was pretty much non-existent. That was on an actual daily driven car.

as for the detonation, the main tuner from Horsepower Engineerings said "Well everybody jumps on this bandwagon of wanting to keep underhood temps down. Which is great, I love it, whatever you can do to keep underhood temps down is going to help make the motor produce more power. But what we're doing by ceramic coating the headers is we are locking that heat inside the exhaust... Not allowing it to dissipate... This heat now acts as an agent in producing detonation. Almost every car I've ever tuned that had ceramic coated headers, was not able to take as much ignition timing as a car with uncoated stainless steel headers. So the power was greatly reduced because instead of tuning for all out power, I had to tune for detonation. Extra fuel, and less timing... Things that have a great effect on what kinds numbers your car will put down on the dyno, and at the track."

I think HPE's reputation for tuning cars speaks for itself. Their ways of buisiness, iffy. But there's no doubt that they can tune a car very well.

 

I went uncoated headers in Houston humidity for over a year. They seem fine some rust,but nothing significant. The paint they came with is worthless crap. I remembered as soon as I started the car, I burnt the paint off in 30 minutes. Hell I thought my car was on fire. Next time I will just go with the stainless steel, but for now the one I have will work.

 

Thats exactly what happend to me but i didn't see any smoke or have any burning smell. They seem to be holding up pretty good though, then again, i've only had for less then 150 miles.

 

why is everyone so concerned with there headers rusting? hell look at most peoples exhaust pipes on cars. its all rusted. it still runs and sounds the same