Ceramic, Chrome, or Stainless headers?

[CandyYote]

Looking to order some headers for my 2012 GT. What are you guys suggestions for headers? Ceramic, Chrome, or Stainless? And I’m going with long tubes.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[1 Alibi 2]

Uncoated Kooks on both GT500's, the stainless turns a copperish color after repeated heat cycles..
.


.

 

[Juice]

Ceramic is the only one that will hold up, as long as it is true ceramic. Should help with underhood temps too.
SS and chrome will discolor/rust. Stay away from Pypes.

 

[Dino Dino Bambino]

Looking to order some headers for my 2012 GT. What are you guys suggestions for headers? Ceramic, Chrome, or Stainless? And I’m going with long tubes.

I'd rule out chrome right away unless you're either on a low budget, don't drive the car very often, or you live in a low rainfall state.
Ceramic reduces under hood heat but if the pipes are mild steel, they'll rust internally.
Stainless steel comes in two grades. The cheaper 409 stainless can form surface rust but 304 stainless contains more chromium and nickel which makes it more rust resistant.

 

[Laga]

I have ceramic coated inside and out Kooks. Only way to go. While I had mine done by a local shop, look into header coating from Eastwood that's DIY. it comes with adapter to do the insides.

 

[Flusher]

IMO, I think the SS looks really good if you polish it first and then let it change colors. It only looks good if you can take the header apart for polishing. Welded collectors make this impossible though.

SS headers can be coated as well.

I have had many headers coated, including my personal boat headers, by:

Embee
2100 Ritchey Stree
Santa Ana CA 92705
(714) 546-6907

In addition to coating inside and out with ceramic, Embee also applies a piston dome coating inside the tubes.

I would avoid stainless headers that are welded without a backpurging process, they crack right next to the welds.

I would also recommend getting your tune sorted out before you get your headers coated. I have seen many burned up sets of coated headers.

I have never measured the temperature between coated and uncoated headers, but coated headers still get hot enough to burn the frak out you.

 

[crjackson]

Kooks 304 SS all the way. They’ll probably outlast the rest of the engine/car. Coating not needed, but available if you really want.

 

[RED09GT]

The benefit vs. expense of coatings for me is hard to justify. It is a lot of money for subjective gains in the real world.

 

[golkhl]

Whatever option you chose, spend the $ on quality. Kooks, and Stainless Works are made from 304SS.

 

[Dino Dino Bambino]

Or stick with the stock headers and save your money towards a supercharger kit instead.

 

[Midlife Crises]

The quality built into Kooks headers is obvious when you take them out of the box. I put them on my GT in 2010. No fitment issues, no cracks and no leaks. Just a purplish gray patina. I think I should have wrapped them when I had the engine out to hold heat in the tubes and help reduce under hood temperatures.

 

[MasterofDisaster]

I like my BBK ceramic coated. The inside of the tubes looked coated but not polished. They look great after a year of use.
Even if you don't get more power from the ceramic coating, you like the lower under hood temps. Makes the car last longer and run better. Flusher is right: they may be coated, but they still get hot.
I had some chrome JBA headers on a foxbody 5.0. They turned blue pretty fast.

 

[Flusher]

 

[RED09GT]

The main reason they saw such a big temperature difference is that the shiny surface on the ceramic header is better at reflecting more of the ambient radiation around it than it is at emitting radiation.
They do help, but not to that extent.

Try an IR thermometer on a flat black pot with boiling water and you are likely to be close to the boiling point of water, try the same test with a stainless steel pot and you'll be closer to the ambient air temperature than the boiling point of the water. Wrong tool for the test.

 

[Sky Render]

Should you wrap headers on a street car? I thought I remembered hearing something about condensation forming and causing rust or something.

 

[MasterofDisaster]

Should you wrap headers on a street car?

An exhaust shop in Banning/Beaumont, California told me not to wrap the chrome JBA headers he sold me. He said that the increased heat would soon weaken the metal. He also said that you shouldn't coat just the outside for the same reason. He did say that ceramic coating inside & out would work.

 

[PonyBoy]

I did BBK ceramic shorties on my 2010 GT with high flow cats and am very happy.

 

[Wingrider]

I have the "Doug's Headers" shorty version with ceramic on my GT500. I picked them for whatever marginal change they will make because they are CARB approved/smog for California. Good look and fitment. I don't want the drama of swapping them every 2 years to pass smog. I have enough to deal with from the other mods.

 

[Brian Pater]

Looking to order some headers for my 2012 GT. What are you guys suggestions for headers? Ceramic, Chrome, or Stainless? And I’m going with long tubes.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Get them the Jet Hot finish. Reduces temperatures too.

 

[Tony Conti]

Or stick with the stock headers and save your money towards a supercharger kit instead.

I'm planning on eventually supercharging my GT. And I was wondering if I should I get kooks LTH with the catted x pipe or should I go shorty headers? Right now I have BBK long tube headers, 2 3/4" high flow catted x pipe and 3" catback with a custom muffler delete since MBRP doesn't make a 3" muffler delete. The problem is the cats are so far back on that setup that they can't get to full operating temp sometimes. Which made my cel come on every once in a while. I mean these cats are pretty much under the driver seat, they're that far back. The kooks are way further up. Do you think that #1 I won't have that problem with those headers and #2 if so, is the horsepower gain enough to justify the $1400 purchase? The main thing is that I have to pass emissions so I cant have a cel and the rear o2s cant be turned off because they plug a computer into it so see if all the monitoring systems have been run and if they passed. Also should this be in the tech thread?