anyone know how to remove swaintech coating from a exhaust header?

My swaintech coated turbo headers look like crap after running.(they are top coated Techline Cermakrome) The top surface is blistering and cracking, I have talked to the other guys who were having similar problems. Even with painted swaintech...

can the swaintech people remove it?

I want to remove it...

What coatings are you guys runnign that arent breaking down with excessive heat??

 

 

I just had my whole exhaust coated by Nitro Plate. Comes with a 1 year warranty at least, and a lifetime against rust.

 

Can you bead blast them?

 

That's too bad about your coating. Mine has managed to stay good with just painting (high temp paint). There are other things you can do like your top coating. There are a couple of companies that do a 2000* green coating that looks pretty industrial.

I don't have any idea how you would get off the Swaintech coating.

You may just want to buy a set of the Ebay Stainless Steel Headers...with SS you don't have to worry about the impurities rising to the surface as with mild steel.

 

I'm assuming its a joke... Ebay headers are a joke just like getting TRUE stainless steel for the price of mild steel.

Some stuff from China is the real deal as I had stuff prototyped, but not knowing it was getting farmed out to China and can say its Okay. But when it comes to metallurgy don't accept melted down ash trays with a nickle chaser as a true SS grade. Just my opinion .


Mike

 

yeah..I would rather stay away from the ebay headers. The ones I have went back and forth to PTK. we made some changes for better fit.

Swiantech was no help..they basically said I would have to grind it off.....common sense...how do you grind a round header and get in all the nooks?

I thought about blasting them to get to the "fresh" swian coating ......but I am not sure what to "top coat" them with so that I dont have the same outcome.

I have emailed a few professional media blaster...some use water also.....the problem is they are not familiar with the product. I havent heard back from a few of them.

I actually think the ceramic holds / retains heat...and eventually raises underhood temps.....my underhood temps are higher with swaintech then with the Cermakrome I originally use..

Very unusual.....

I am very frustrated....I need to figure out what the do...these headers fit very well and were great quality...

What is the red coating APS uses on there turbo manifolds? Does it seem to be holding up?.....it is also on a cast manifold.....temo difference?
Keep the ideas coming
Tom

 

Tom, the red coating that APS uses, well.. they use it, but the manifolds that come to the customers are bare metal. I swaintech coated mine and have had no issues, but the finish you are looking for is a much more refined look than what I have. you can e-mail Peter from APS and maybe he will tell you what they use. Good Luck!
Dan

 

Not calling you a liar Tom but that seems very unusual to me. I used Swaintech coating on my Stainless Works LT headers and noticed a huge difference with radiant heat...to the point where you could put you hand within an inch of the headers and not feel enough heat to withdraw your hand.

When I had the PTK headers with the original Jet Hot style coatings, I couldn't even place my hand near the collector for more then a few secs without feeling like it was going to burn. With my swaintech coating I can hold my hand there until I get tired of holding it there.

What did you coat over the top of your swaintech coating with...maybe it is actually retaining heat. I have driven my car a lot with this kit and not had any issues...I am still using the original Honda alternator and see 13.9-14.2vdc on the DIC....and the alt is right next to the collector.

 

it was top coated with Techline Ceramakrome. Iwent to a local powder coater who ha been doing this for 20yrs. he said the pop marks with the areas that look like solder are where the top coat melted. I had the same top coat applied to the header before the swiantech and it did not do what it did when applied to the swaintech. The powder coater said today that he has seen the swaintech coat actually retain heat longer and get to higher temps because there is less heat actually raidiating off.

All I can tell you is my findings. Actually after a 100 mile ride I opened the hood and it was semi floppy due to the heat. I was concerned it was going to "fold" over. when I closed the hood it was 3/8 bowed and stayed this way until it heated up again.I never had these heat problems before..

I am not sure what is happening.

The powder coater couldnt blast off the swaintech..so he said he would acid soak the cermakrome off and then recoat them with a higher heat titanium. He said it has a higher "melting" point than the coating on it now..

I wish I would have just coated them with the black satin 2000 degree coat the first time.

The swiantech cannot be removed

 

I have the SwainTech coating on my headers and there is almost no heat comming off of them. I don't see why beadblasting or sand blasting wouldn't take the coating off.

 

Well I'm sorry to hear about your woes and it's hard for me to say as I haven't experienced anything close to what you have. Even after I drove 4 hours in 110-112* temps (not stopping once), put the car on A&As dyno the next day (in front of 100s of people), made 800+ rwhp and drove back home the same day...parked it in a parking lot (still 100* out) in direct sun and went to a concert. How hot was it out when you were driving? I still have the coils and plug wires on the fuel rail.

Just curious do you have the reflective tape that Kerry sells that goes on the bottom of the hood? I do and Arnel did...pretty sure Nick does too. Arnel did mention to me he did a track event and that the hood seemed to lose some rigidity around the hinges..but that he didn't have the tape on in that location either. Kerry was very specific about the tape is certain locations.

I know NASA has lost a few Space Shuttles...but don't remember them having anything to do with the swaintech coating failures. So your coatings guy might not fully understand what is going on. The reason mild steel works well is because for one it's easy to weld but the other is that it expands and doesn't crack as easily as Stainless Steel. I think it is the properties within the mild steel as they change expand and then cool...I get the little solder looking pieces as well..but they are very small and hard to tell with my headers being painted.

I installed an 25 row Earls Oil cooler over the last month and last weekend it was 80* I drove the car for about 2 hours...car never got above 180* coolant temps or 190 oil temps (0w-40). I popped the hood a couple of times to check things out...always do that after a while driving and I have just put things back together. I also installed the screens in my hood and was interested how it may or may not have effected air flow.

Maybe you could wrap the headers to see if it effects the under hood temps...Nick and Arnel had their headers wrapped originally...see if you experience any temperature change or issues.

Eitherway good luck with everything. Sounds like you got your tranny all installed and working.

 

I do have the reflective heat shield tape....a few areas actually started peeling up from the heat. The hinge area is where the hood became weal also....not even where the most heat is.

So you are still having metal solder looking pieces.....and you painted the headers? How can the metal be coming from the header if it is completely coated? So the metal is not coming from the top coat but rather the header?
If it is coming from the header than it must be getting hot enough to melt the metal.
My headers have been run for 5000 miles in the past so you would think all the impurities would be gone...also swaintech is put on at 3000 degrees...isnt this enought to burn of the impurities??

Who came up with the impurity theory?

Do you think if I have the headers blasted to "fresh" swaintech...becuase there is no removing the swaintech and cover it with 2000 degree titanium coat I am still going to get bubbles and "solder" pieces forming?

The temp on my ride was 90 degrees....your trip sounds real hot?? dont know what is happening??
Thanks for the reply

 

The APS red manifolds are simply coated to show the "hot" side of their displays. I don't believe there is any intent as a real thermal coating.

Tom

 

Mild steel has impurities or disimilar metals. Swaintech coating is pourous like ceramic tile...it appears and feels gritty so it breathes. As it was explained to me this is part of heat transfer capabilities and properties. The reason I painted mine was not because I didn't like the white hot appearance, it was because when I had my LT headers coated with my blower setup and the stock motor lunched, my dipstick popped up like a sprinkler head and sprayed oil. When I cleaned everything up I noticed that there were stains on the headers (swaintech coating) that wouldn't come off...so they were white with black splotches where the oil was. Carb cleaner and brake fluid wouldn't take it off either.

So when I talked to Swaintech about it they told me that a lot of people just paint them with high temp paint and that way dirt will not show up or stains.

If you coat the headers to the point where you fill in the pourous material of the swaintech coatings...I am not sure how well the coating still works...you don't coat bricks in a fire pit or tile.

All that I can say is that I have driven the car in some severely hot weather..for extended periods of time...the only thing that got hot was my oil temp....260* during that time...this is why I put on the oil cooler and haven't seen over 200* yet. I will be testing it this summer again. I only drive my car when it's 70* or hotter as I like the tires to be able to heat up to get tracktion.

My hinge area is not covered with the reflective tape either...only the base panels between the naca ducts..and only the top portion or back half of the hood.....everybody at the last 2 A&A parties has seen it, as well as Vette Magic and other car shows here in Cali.

I completely agree that your temps shouldn't be getting that hot...what is your coolant and oil temps during this time? I mean AVB road races his car and it works well...he had to change his fan temps even (raise them)....and he has an Iron Block.

oh and to answer your question..sorry I got off track.

I have put 1ks of miles on this setup now....and I have noticed that the little solder pieces have gotten less....they still appear but only at the base of the flange on the collector...no place else. Its the impurities in the mild steel working its way through the pours in the Swaing tech coatings.....kind of like a metal zit...but with age they go away more.

I think for simply applying a test it would be simplest to wrap the headers and see if that helps first. You may be able to also blast the top coatings that you have over the swaintech coating and then just paint them like I did. Hershel makes 4 different colors of high temp paint ranging from 1800-2000*. I used the cast iron color...dark grey. Check my pics in sig.

 

I understand everything you are saying.....

as far as impurities.....I get the weird felling that the base header metal is getting much hotter because the swaintech is not allowing the heat to disperse....and the metal we see is the header metal actually slightly melting.

Why dont we see impurities with regular coatings? Maybe because base metal is not getting as hot because metal is allowed to radiate the heat..

Trapping all the heat in has to be affecting the metal......kind of like the metal fatique when you wrap a header....but to a more extreme..

I am not here to start arguments.....just picking brains and trying to figure out what to do

Tom

 

I view this as just discussion and it is interesting as all of our setups are slightly different and customized. I think the reason you don't see the impurities with the standard coating (jet hot) is because it doesn't retain the heat as well. When I first got my headers everything was almost a polished aluminum look....if you look at the plumbing to my IC it looked like that...but the flange area near the collector and some tubes quickly became almost white (powder looking)as the coating was heated it turned color.

The idea of the swaintech is to keep the heat within the tubes (or whatever is coated) this helps with radiant heat and also helps keep velocity up as the exhaust gas is kept hotter as it exits.

Since the collector is a merge collector this is where all of the heat is as it enters the turbine. The only reason I think it is impurities is because mine seems to have lessend over time...I will start observing the frequency just for something to do and obsess on with the car.

 

OMG!A floppy hood Geez.That would ruin my day/year.

 

What were your coolant temps before the oil cooler install?
Take care.

 

It varied depending on driving conditions and how I was driving the car..the hottest I saw was when I drove the car while going through the valley at 110-112* that summer (late June) and up a 6% grade (called the grapevine). Obviously there was a lot of load on the system this was also prior to installing my big mouth air dam....I would consider this a pretty severe test on the entire cooling system. As I recall the following were my temps.

Coolant 225-230* (not too bad considering the stock fan settings for the second fan are like 230*)..but still enough to make one take notice on the guage.

Oil Temp got up to 246*...I didn't like that but maybe not too bad considering driving for 4 hours 110-112* temps @ averaging 70-80 mph..in 6th gear that is almost lugging...so when you factor in accessories constantly working its a pretty big load on the system.

But I was seeing oil temps at about 225-230 when it was between 85-105* ambient (after about 1 hour driving). So I decided to install the oil cooler, but I have not yet subjected the vehicle to the same type of environment as I did that one summer (yet)..but certainly will as it will be 100+* here soon enough (for about 30 days a year on average).

Since the install I drove the car for a couple of hours while it was 80*+ a couple of weekends ago and my oil temp never got over 200* and my coolant temp stayed about 180*. I had the AC on, 1K watt stereo and DVD/Nav 12" Sub going too. So there was a little load...I also was on some back roads doing some stop and start full boost through the gears driving.....up to about 140 mph.

It takes a long time to heat 9 quarts of oil up with a -10 AN 25 row Earl's Oil Cooler. I have to be careful not to rev it until its above 150*..which is taking longer...running 0w40 oil my oil pressure at idle on start up is 55-60 psi and it will spike up to 70-80psi immediately with rpm increase until my oil is above 150*. I got it to 120* thinking that was hot enough and the oil pressure guage would still swing pretty quick...so I have had to adapt my driving and warm up period after installing the oil cooler.

I have seen some immediate benefit and am curious what the difference will be when I drive it in really hot weather for a few hours will be.