Mine are still good, but am going to change them for prevention.
Thanks for that. If a client asks you to install the best system in terms of longevity for their 355 for normal road use, may we know what you would advise? I appreciate that this might involve elements other than just the headers.
So last summer (2012) I had to have my QV London exhaust manifolds replaced, as they had failed...about 25k miles, I believe, on them. Sent back to QV London, and after many weeks of emails and phone calls, they finally returned them (almost two months passed) and they claim their original process they only replaced to just past the first bend, now they replace the entire tubing up to the collector. After a couple thousand miles of use, the right side started rattling, so Ferrari of Seattle removed it and took off the shielding to discover no insulation is installed by QV London! So FoS installed proper installation, and rewelded the shielding back on, and no more rattles. I will tell you that QV London does NOT use stainless steel welding rod, and the welding quality, especially at the collector was pretty bad looking...even to my inexpert eye. Personally, I will no longer recommend QV London as an option. The fact they did a very cheap repair in the first place (6 years ago), then take forever on the warranty claim, AND not install proper insulation material between the pipes and the metal shielding...I think there are better quality options out there.
I think it can also depend on the quality of the coating. IMO the Swain Technology White Lightning coating is by far the superior option over anything else for this purpose. The CATS give of more heat that the headers in my fathers car. I did put a heat blanket over the starter and I made heat shield covers for the motor mounts. The cooling fans blow directly over the headers helping to dissipate the heat out the lid and challenge grill. Over 10,000 miles and no sign of heat related failures. Just look at the condition of the header wrap under these shields with less than 7k miles on them: http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/138620384-post2.html IMO the perfect solution might be ceramic coating and a custom inconel wrap.
