hey all. i won a set of MAC mids on ebay.. they have some rust and i wanted to know the best/thickest paint to put on them.. any ideas?

Color doesnt matter.. i am going to wrap them in header wrap (black) anyhow.

 

Dont use header wrap... it traps moisture and makes them rust and will screw up the paint.

Just get them coated.

 

Thanks for the heads up! I thought it would help them stay coole runder temp.. so i wont have heat shields anymore...

So how hot do the headers get? i dont want to burn up anything.

 

Tom Byrne burned a F-Body to the ground using header wrap. It will absorb any spilled oil which can ignite.

 

When you wrap headers, the carbon steel tube reaches basically the full exhaust temperature, which is over 1000degF. Carbon steel is not intended to operate at these temperatures. It starts to oxidize (rust) from the extreme heat, not from trapped moisture. Then the steel and the welds start to crack.

The correct solution is a cera-metallic coating (e.g. Jet Hot, although they seem to be having a lot of problems) on both the inside and outside of the tubes. That keeps the heat inside the header, increasing scavenging, and significantly reduces the temperature outside the headers.

 

If you do paint them , clean them thoroughly, bead blast and then use an outdoor cooker paint good to 1500 degrees. Now this will not reduce the heat radiating from the tubes, but will keep them from rusting..... for a while.

 

Well first... is the heat generated by the headers and issue? Will it burn up stuff? I dont have the money for a Ceramic coat job..

 

Jethot coating is the best.

Also POR-15 has a special silver high temp header paint, however I have never used it.

 

Hmm i might look into the POR 15 thing. How much does it cost to have a set of headers coated with Jet hot?

How many people have non coated headers and dont have any heat issues under the hood?

 

Header heat will tax your spark plug wires; guys running uncoated headers usually end up buying heat sleaving for their wires to keep them from failing. Not sure what a set of heat sleaves costs, but you might factor in their cost into you decision.

 

OBe,

thanks. Sleeves sound like a good idea and alot cheaper than having my headers coated.

 

Don't paint them. I tried painting mine with a high temp paint (VHT, I think) and properly baked it on there with short running times, and it eventually turned white and came off. Some spots had paint on them still, but the "hotter" spots burned the paint off. It did work as a coating for a little while though.

 

Well my concern is that they have a bit of rust on them.. I am going to have them bead blasted to get rid of the rust and then cross my fingers with having them painted with some type of heat reisistant paint. I am getting the feeling that i should have just bought the headers new.

 

I priced my RK sport headers and y-pipe and it was like $320.00
Mondo expensive.

 

I just called jet hot and they said they would totally redo the headers.. inside and outside coating for 199 dollars, plus shipping. Not too bad.. I am thinking it would actually be cheaper to have them do it right than to have a local machine ship d!ck around with it.