355 factory headers

For those who might be interested thought I would share with you guys info on an experiment on ceramic coating factory headers on my 355. First off the only reason for doing what I did here was because at the time there were not any aftermarket headers made in the US yet and I didn't want to use the rebuilt technique from England because I wanted the shielding to be eliminated and wasn't sure how they would look pieced together. Anyway a little background, I had a bad right hand unit, holes blown thru it. Replaced it with a new factory header removed shielding and coated it. The leftside was ok to the point of only having a few heat stress points(deformed slightly I guess for lack of better discription) no cracks no holes you could barely see a problem. Wanted to still use it to see what would happen after it was coated and used and didn't want to spend anymore money on what was/is a bad factory piece. Kevin(NAPerformance) was just talking at the time of doing headers and thought this would be a good bandaid till his were done. It has been 16 months and about 3500 miles and the ceramic coating has stayed where its supossed to. Even the original header on the left side is doing fine. Additional info the car is CH car and has the race exhaust on and no cats, the entire system is coated. I'm not really sure now if the shielding is the original problem or what, again there are no cats so that could effect heat retention too. I realize not much time has gone by here but I didn't think I would get this far. Regards, Vern

 

Hi Dave, I was aware of that too, on the burn thru, that is why I left the original left side header in place, the car has 14,500 miles on it now. I was concerned about the leftside more than the right, since the right is a new piece and not enough time on it, thinking that maybe by now the tubes on the leftside might show some deterioration and the ceramic coating might start coming off but, not yet. This is kind of an irrelevant experiment because the factory headers are junk as we all know and most folks would not want to go to the trouble of removing the shielding and powder coating, I just happen to like the exposed tube look. Since we now have Kevins headers and others it doesn't make any real difference now. So anyway just a report on what was going on not meant to be anymore than that. Regards, Vern

 

Answer to 1 and 2 would be yes. Heat would be the obvious reason for the headers to not hold up. And that is the problem, Ferrari didn't use the correct stainless tubing to hold up to what they were subjecting the header to. ie; cats and the shields. Proof of that would be looking at the 348 and the 360's headers they seem to be fine and are subjected to a similar environment. Since I have removed two contributing heat retention factors from my headers it may be that mine will hold up but, 99% of the owners of 355s are not going to be able to do what I have done. Again my post was just information for those who might care. regards, vern

 

Richard, the second 02 sensor doesn't control the slow down lights there is probe in the cat that does that. It looks different from the 02 sensor its smaller and thinner and would be on the back side of the cat(hotter side). The 2nd 02 is there to check the condition of exhaust after the cat does its magic. If its not within parameters programmed in the ECU than the CEL comes on. I would still assume the Euro ECUs are less senitive to the after cat emissions since they appearently don't get CELs on and the US cars appear to have CELs come on when you remove the cats but still use both 02 sensors. Regards, Vern