Cheramic Coating On Headers, Good Or Bad..?

Doh! My only vent is the forums.:-(

Back to the topic. Just finished some Google research. Seems that when you find someone to coat your headers there are many things you should know about the substrate in order to get the best results. Basically it sounds like you just don't walk in and ask for them to be coated unless of course you want the unexpected results later on down the road.

However...I guess I have been victim of that and had a set of coated headers start forming hair-line cracks in the coating. Now I know why. Now I have moved back to mild steel and wrapped them.

For information purposes....we ran naked headers and took temp reading on several surfaces in the header vicinity. As previously mentioned the alternator case was a concern area as was the oil reservoir. After wrapping the headers the surface temp on the oil reservoir was 38 degrees C cooler. A big difference. The surface of the AC Compressor had dropped by 29 degrees C.

A combination of wrapping the headers and placing strategic heat shields and heat insulating boxes makes a huge difference. Sorry that I don't have any test data for a set of coated headers. Maybe send the question to Fabspeed directly since they offer coating as an option, but I will caution you that they were asked the question many times and failed to answer which leaves me a little suspicious at best. Obviously they never tested a set of their own product insitu.

 

When I bought my 355 last year, it had the original headers on it, but they were crappy. The previous owner had some cracks in the headers re-welded. His shop took off the the factory heat shielding, fixed the cracks, recoated the headers with something akin to spray paint and reinstalled them. I think you could cook a hot dog over the engine.

I bought the NA Performance headers right away. They came with a black coating that I was not so sure about so I took them (in person) to Jet-Hot and had them recoated. While I was there, I ended up talking to one of their engineers. He recommended the Extreme Sterling coating for the 355. According to him, Jet-Hot designed the coating to address issues they had with engines that had very high EGTs. The Extreme Sterling goes up to 1,700ºF vs the Sterling's 1,300ºF.

Regarding wrapping the ceramic coated headers, the engineer strongly did not recommend doing that. He felt that you could damage the coating.

After installation, we also put a heat shield between the alternator and the header.

My only regret is that I did not quantify the before and after temperature difference. But from a qualitative standpoint, the difference is very big. The engine bay seems much cooler and I have not had any problems with the alternator.

 

BINGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Tubi headers, problem solved
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I have also heard great things about Jet-Hot Coatings (they also do pistons). Thanks to everyone who posted! Knowledge exchange is great and to everyone's benefit!

 

Robin:

Thanks, I am also looking at Tubi. How long have you had your Tubi headers? Although they use a thicker gauge of S.S., I have read of similar problems with cracking, etc.. Have you personally had any problems? Additionally, I don't think Tubi has optimized the header tube configuration for exhaust gas flow (i.e., more power), but I certainly could be wrong. Please correct me, if so.

P.S. Looking at the picture, the difference in quality betwwen the OEM and Tubi is amazing, isn't it?

 

I have seen and felt the Tubi product up close and personal. Uhm, you're probably right about the optimized collectors and I think they probably went with a conventional layout of collectors that are more flat and not sculpted around each other like snakes having sex like the Fabspeeds. They have done this to allow for the tooling access and ease of the shielding process. I wonder if they have in fact done any insitu testing which is so important on the 355 and its notoriously hot engine bay.

The Tubi headers make sense to me since they are an "engineered solution" type of company. The Fabspeed headers are not. Tubi obviously realized the importance of the shielding whereas many on-lookers probably would think that Tubi is just trying to reinvent the Ferrari manifolds but I'm betting a lot more R & D went into them than that. Obviously Fabspeed went only for the "look" and didn't care to research the need or obvious requirement for shielding. Huge business philosophy difference. We as owners and enthusiasts need to be careful of which companies and products we rely on.

 

Fantastic!!! details details, how'd you do that?? Wait, did they come with that heat shielding?

 

Our ceramic coating has been NASA approved for use on the Space Shuttle Thermal Protection Tiles. We can match the coefficient of expansion of any substrates. It is applied at room temperature on a clean and roughened surface for proper adherence.


We never tried any automotive application, but after reading this thread, I am tempted to perform a test on my own headers and see if our coating lowers the ambient temperature?

 

As I understand it, the tiles on the shuttle are tiles so that they can contract and expand without cracking. If the shuttle was covered with a solid piece of ceramic, it would crack.

 

I say do it. I did mine and love it.
Here's my thread on it.

http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=172024&page=5
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Yes, and tiles had to be identified (hence our coating) so they may be replaced. Our coating has been tested up to 3600F and Mach 4 and 2800 F for ablative properties. My top speed is around Mach 0.21, so I should be safe.

 

LOL! I've only gone about Mach 0.175 so far.

So the ceramic tiles are insulators and your coating further insulates the tiles?

 

way off topic now, but those space shuttle tiles are insane! Crazy Biot number for heat transfer...prof in school (Lee Langston, huge contributions to gas turbines) heated a tile red hot with a torch, we could touch it bare handed and not get burned. They just don't conduct heat, amazing stuff.

 

Scott,

I've had the headers on the car since um, February 2006 (had to check my own photo...) My stock manifolds blew wide open at about 26k miles, and I'm up to about 41k now, and the Tubis are doing just fine. They really are a work of art... the craftsmanship is top notch. I haven't had any trouble with them either. There wasn't any noticeable gain in power, but it did clean up the sound a lot, probably due to the fact that I was driving around with gaping holes before. I'm not an engineer so I'm not sure about the tube design, but I do recall that they looked just like the factory units, only much beefier. I wouldn't go any other route really. If you can find them, I highly recommend picking them up.

Uconn - Yep, what you're seeing there is right out of the box from Tubi. I almost wanted to hang them on my wall for a few weeks before installing them...

-R

 

FYI - I am looking at my 30K service coming up and have been researching headers, etc. so I can budget this project. Called the Tubi Distributor in Michigan. He informed me the last 2 or 3 sets for a 355 he got in he sent back due to a fitting (lack of) issue recently. He said Tubi is aware of it but won't have 355 headers available for a few months yet. Evidently they go on vacation for the month of August.

Cost is around 5k

 

Europeans usually take August off cause it's so damn hot. And I guarantee it will be more than "a few months." It's the Italian way.

My reputable F shop told me over a year ago they had a major fitment issue on some 355 Tubi headers, and were simply told by the reps to "deal with it." It was dealt with, but probably at significant cost to the customer. Maybe my Fabspeeds aren't the best for engine bay heat, low-end performance, or sound, but at least the damn things fit without any flange reaming, and were cheap. I'm not on the track with my car, and even if I was I still probably couldn't tell any performance loss/gain provided by just headers, even the ones designed by NASA lol.

Oh yeah, my guys used about a hundred feet of standard hot-rod shop variety heat wrap on 'em (no coating, but with custom alt. shield) and I've run the sucker for about 1000 spirited miles, with no alt/temp problems.

The damn power steering fluid tank, though...

 

A buddy replaced 5 alternators for €€€ since he is running NAPerformance headers (coated inside and outside).
NAPerformance promised to ship a heatshield for all customers "whether they've had issues or not".
Got no shield until today.

cinque


http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=136962749&postcount=10

 

I was told they are around $7500 a set..

 

They are under $5000

 

$7500.00!!!! These Tubi exhaust headers are well-engineered units but, I'm sorry, these manufacturers have to get a grip!! I realize that some R&D went into their manufacture, but they are, in reality, just an optimized (albeit a highly optimized) version of the OEM exhaust headers. Moreover, once you have the mandrels and jigs set-up and a good welder, exhaust systems are relatively easy to fabricate (especially when you are not trying to optimize the tube length/diameter/geometry and collectors to increase hp and torque). I would guess that the total cost (materials, labor, etc.) to Tubi for these units are approximately $600.00 per pair. We, as exotic owners, all expect to pay a "Horsey Tax", but a potential 12.5-times mark-up is just too much!!! I'm sorry to get on a "soap-box", but these manufacturers (Ferrari Spa, included) have to realize that all Ferrari owners are not multi-millionaires or "trust-fund" babies. OK, I feel better now....where's my Haldol (an anti-psychotic medication)???

 

I suggest 50mg, 3 times daily.

Albeit your judgments are correct, so you may be self-medicating for no reason whatsoever. Live happy, die happy!